


Kintsugi

by xtinethepirate



Series: Kintsugi [1]
Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angry Erik, Charles Always Says the Absolute Worst Thing He Could Possibly Say, Charles You Will Be Drunk, Charles-centric, Chess, Drinking & Talking, Erik has Issues, F/M, Feelings, Fix-It, Gratuitous Use of Shakespeare - Freeform, Idiots in Love, M/M, NaNoWriMo, So Many Feelings - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-28
Updated: 2015-09-28
Packaged: 2018-04-23 20:33:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 49,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4891195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xtinethepirate/pseuds/xtinethepirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Most people would like damages to their broken items to be concealed and hidden by repair making the object look like new. But the Japanese art of Kintsugi follows a different philosophy. Rather than disguising the breakage, kintsugi restores the broken item where the damage is incorporated into the aesthetic of the restored item, making it part of the object’s history. Kintsugi uses lacquer resin mixed with powdered gold, silver, platinum, copper or bronze, resulting into something more beautiful than the original.</i>
</p><p>When Charles had told Hank there would be a time when they would all be together again, he hadn't meant immediately. In Charles’s mind, that indeterminate time was something more along the lines of “in a few months or a year, once Erik realized what a colossal ass he had been and  Charles had stopped wanting to punch him again.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> A belated posting of my NaNoWriMo 2014 fic--one month to write; almost eleven months to edit. Thanks especially to Cyn for daily hand-holding, reading, and encouragement throughout that month. She is also entirely to blame for the final instalment in this series. Thanks as well to Jen for helping me plan out some scenes and for the thorough edit (all remaining mistakes are mine), as well as to Marlene for the German translations! 
> 
> The fic is entirely finished (at last!). This part has three chapters; parts two and three are one chapter each, and will be posted over the next few days. 
> 
> Content Notes: I've kept the canon backstory of Erik's daughter Anya dying when she was quite young. As Magda is in DOFP (and in this fic), for ret-con purposes, I've called his wife at the time Marlene.

I

Charles tried to sleep on the drive back from the airport. Overtaxed after years spent atrophying, his mind was throbbing, pulsing behind his eyes and hypersensitive to the thoughts of every person in every car and town they passed. The psychic ache more than bested any of the quite impressive hangovers he’d achieved during graduate school, and that wasn’t even accounting for the stadium Erik had—Charles tried to direct his tender thoughts elsewhere..

Hank, bless him, was silent as they drove, though his thoughts were loud and upset. They hadn’t managed to find Logan before they’d left, a failure for which Hank was blaming himself ( _if I’d been faster, if I’d disabled the sentinel successfully, if I’d held Erik in Paris_ ) though his thoughts slipped occasionally, accompanied by guilty sidelong glances at Charles, toward Raven as well. The poor man was trying as hard not to think of her as Charles was Erik, so he let Hank believe him asleep to spare him some dignity. 

He regretted the kindness when Hank abruptly slammed on the brakes, making the tires screech and adding whiplash to Charles’s laundry list of head injuries. Marvelous. But before he could speak, anger—refreshingly not his own—overwhelmed his mind. He knew Hank’s skin would be swirling with blue even before he braved opening his eyes to see _why_.

Sunlight did its best to drill through his pupils; Charles did his best not to vomit. He patted Hank’s furry arm and tried to project an aura of calm and relaxation, but didn’t imagine it was terribly convincing. He was anything but calm himself. 

The gate to the estate no longer sagged across the driveway like it was embarrassed by its own poor showing. The rust had been smoothed away to make the metal gleam. The school sign was re-affixed. And, even with his thoughts reeled in tightly, Charles could _feel_ alertness and anticipation. 

“Enough, Hank. He already knows we’re here.”

*

It had been years since Erik had felt Charles inside his head, permeating his every breath and thought and action. They had been allies then, had even called each other “friend”: a first for a man for whom “trust” was a manipulation tactic. Somehow, even as enemies, even in the grotesque sensation of being used as a puppet, there was an intimacy to the psychic connection. It was a forced intimacy, an intrusion into the very core of his self, enacted with a ruthless violence—coming from Charles, Erik could almost admire it—that made Erik fight back inside his own head despite the futility of doing so. But after a decade of isolation and silence, it...wasn’t entirely unwelcome. He had always wondered what Charles could do if he was pushed too far.

When he was in control of himself again (when Charles _permitted_ him to regain control; he had no illusions that he had won that particular battle), Erik was tempted to lunge immediately for the helmet Mystique had discarded. He looked at it, lying abandoned in the grass. He felt Charles behind his eyes, looking with him. For a shared heartbeat, neither of them moved. 

Then Erik was alone in his head again. Charles wouldn’t stop him if he wanted to take it; no, Charles, bloodied and exhausted and as disappointed in him as ever, would give Erik enough rope to hang himself with. 

He left the helmet where it had fallen. 

Charles didn’t call him “friend” when he left. 

The city outside was in an uproar, police cordoning off the roads for miles in each direction. Erik shed his armour and wiped the worst of the blood from his neck before stumbling past the cars, acting as though he were in shock. He had long since learned how to pass unnoticed in crowds, how to adapt his demeanor as the situation demanded, but caution made him feel out each gun, each car, to use as a weapon if need be. But no one gave him a second glance. The humans in their panic were self-centered, gawking and yelling as policemen tried both to herd them back further away from the wreckage and dodge breathless questions from reporters. By tomorrow his face would be splashed across newspapers and television broadcasts, but for the moment Erik was remarkable only in that he was heading in the opposite direction, putting as much distance between himself and the White House as he could. For now, he would take full advantage of his anonymity. 

He caught snatches of the news from car radios and half-hysterical gossip as he walked with his head down. The president was dead; no, the Ruskies had sent assassins, but the president was alive; no, the assassin had been some weird science experiment, alien, _mutant_. The word “mutant” was picked up and reused, even when the details of the story differed: the president had been shot by a mutant to try to start a war; the president _was_ a mutant, and the attack was a conspiracy. The president had been saved by a mutant, who had prevented a war. 

Charles wouldn’t forgive him for it, but they weren’t in hiding any longer. 

“Whoa, you look like hell.”

Erik turned sharply, already reaching out to grasp a nearby car, ready to hurl it at his opponent. It was with some reluctance that he let it go when he saw the silver-haired teenager who had been press-ganged into breaking him out of prison—Peter, he thought Charles had called him—leaning against a storefront. He glanced up the street quickly, but it was otherwise empty; everyone, it would seem, had run to the National Mall to observe the destruction. Humans were not terribly occupied with their own self-interest. 

“You’re jumpy, too. You always been jumpy, or does that come with the ‘almost killed the president’ territory? Though I guess you kinda make a hobby out of that, huh.”

“Not much of a hobby,” Erik replied, releasing the car and continuing to walk past him. “Given that I’ve yet to kill any presidents.”

“I think that just means you suck at it.”

With Peter’s powers there was no use trying to outpace the kid. Erik stopped again, turning and grabbing hold of every bit of metal in that stupid jacket to drag him close. 

“What do you want?”

Peter’s cocky smile slipped, and his expression hardened. For the first time, Erik thought he saw the resemblance. 

“Thought you might need some place to go, what with the whole ‘escaped from prison, wanted by literally every security agency in the world, dropped a stadium on a national monument’ thing—” and there was that smile again, “—which was pretty cool. If you’re planning to take that act on tour, I have a list of other ugly monuments to flatten. Though, maybe less with the almost flattening geeky professors. You still mad at him for punchin—?”

“No,” Erik interrupted, when it was clear that he wouldn’t otherwise have a chance to answer any of Peter’s questions. A cheap hotel and the next flight out of the country had been the basic plan, but Peter was right: he had been branded a terrorist and would be treated as such anywhere he went. It would be more prudent to hide for a while. “No, I don’t have anywhere to go.”

Peter nodded sympathetically. “Well, you drop stadiums on your friends, so. No real surprise.”

“Yes, we’ve established that,” Erik snapped. It had been an outlandish gesture—that had been the _point_ —but he hadn’t burned his bridges with the one man he respected and called friend, hadn’t set himself up as the mutant bogeyman for humans to revile, just to be mocked by a teenager who had no concept of the politics involved. 

But Peter wasn’t listening. He snapped his goggles on, straightened his jacket fussily, and put one hand at the nape of Erik’s neck. 

“Don’t worry; it gets easier.”

It didn’t. 

As the world slowly stopped spinning around him, Erik gripped the mailbox that had rushed up next to him out of nowhere, trying to quell his nausea. The metal welled up around his fingers, surrounding them like a welcoming embrace. Finally, the world settled back into place well enough that he could focus on the precise white letters on the side. _Maximoff,_ it read. There went any hope that Peter’s offhand remark in the elevator hadn’t meant what Erik thought. Wonderful; within the space of a week he’d become a fugitive, a terrorist, and a father. He could only imagine what Charles would say.

After so long in deprivation, the suburb sang to him from all sides, downspouts and family cars and sewer pipes glutting his senses in the stillness. For a long time, it had become so much background noise to him, an awareness secondary to his focus on revenge. Until it had been taken away. He closed his eyes and just breathed, letting the hum of it settled into his bones. But even away from the chaos of the city centre and with the grounding sensation of metal, he was not yet steady on his feet when the screen door slammed open. 

Magda’s blonde hair had started to fade toward grey, and she’d settled into middle age, standing in front of her home in the life that she’d made with love and fury and fear in her expression when she looked at her—their—son. But she hadn’t changed much, which surprised him. When Erik looked at her, he could vividly remember being in his twenties and reeling from the loss of his wife and daughter, remembered what it had been like to be so poor he could barely feed himself, let alone scrape together the money for passage to the United States. He remembered a rage so hot he felt it would burn him alive inside and being _helpless_ with it, hating himself and the curse that made him feel metal at all times, the curse that had brought him to Shaw and had caused the deaths of his mother, Anya, and Marlene. He remembered the only other person on that _verdammten_ boat who had spoken German, who had found him twisting the Reichmark between his fingers one night on the deck and hadn’t been afraid.

_“Wie machst du das? Das ist doch ein trick. Bring mir das bei!"_

_"Ich weiß nicht wie ich es mache. Ich...fühle es einfach."_

_"Tu es nochmal? Ich mag es sehen.”_

Her English had been poor, but his non-existent, and that was where it had started: two orphans curled up together in a too-small cot with sweat drying on their skin, her reading aloud from a battered book that was one of her few possessions as he tried to follow the words. Or waking from a dream of fire, the taste of ashes in his mouth, to find her speaking soothingly in his ear. Language uttered into the dark or pressed against skin, as stilted and awkward as they had been with each other, children forced to grow up too quickly.

He hadn’t seen her since they had reached New York. She hadn’t changed at all, but he had felt every single one of the seventeen years that separated the man he was now from the boy he had been. 

Slowly, Erik straightened and let go his tight grip on the mailbox, passing his hand over it to smooth out the impressions his fingers had left. 

Magda’s expression was cold, her jaw set as she came down the walkway. It was only when she came close that he saw the redness of her eyes, the tremble of her lower lip. “Magda,” he began, not knowing how even to start—-

Peter whistled as Erik tried to massage some feeling back into his bruised jaw. “You get punched a lot. Think it’s—”

“Because I drop buildings on people? Yes, undoubtedly.” No bones broken still, fortunately, but the blow had reopened the wounds in his neck. Erik could feel the slow seep of blood on his skin, the iron leeching from his body. 

“Was going to say your winning personality, generally, but the building thing is a contender.”

“Peter,” Magda spoke over him. “Go inside and get your sister.”

Peter shoved his goggles up onto his head, surprised and outraged. “But mom—!”

“You’re taking Wanda to the park. Now. Out the back door. At an unobtrusive speed, please.”

Erik waited in silence, even though Peter briefly looked to him in mute appeal before he stormed into the house. He knew better than to intervene. “Is he usually that...” Erik cast around for an English word that would fit, but had to revert to their mother tongue, “ _...pubertär_?”

“Don’t.” Magda bit off the end of the word hard, as though it tasted sour. “He’s a child, Erik. Don’t ask me about him when you just tried to drag him into your war.”

It was a struggle, to hold back the reflexive anger, to re-center himself and consciously let go of every piece of metal he’d grabbed hold of in the vicinity. That war would come to Peter whether Magda liked it or not, if men like Trask were allowed to exist. They would take Peter and cage him so he couldn’t run, would wipe out that smug grin permanently, and hang his goggles next to Angel’s wing as a trophy. Magda of all people should understand that; she knew about Marlene and Anya, how he had been too naive, too weak to protect them. It would not happen again. They would not take his son.

“On the contrary,” he said, voice deceptively even as cars settled back onto their tires and the wires overhead stopped humming. “I’m trying to keep that war from ever reaching him.”

He didn’t know what Magda saw on his face in that moment, if she remembered the stories shared when neither of them could sleep, or if he had simply frightened her. Either way, she bit her lower lip, then gestured him toward the house with a stiff nod. Erik followed, wary. He could feel the layout of the house in its plumbing and wires, but the true sense of the place wasn’t something that could be traced in filigrees of metal. It was worn around the edges with scuffs on the floor and couch cushions crushed, a toddler’s toys strewn in front of the TV and pencil marks on the door frame with “Peter” and “Wanda” written next to heights and dates. It was a house that had seen children growing up safe within its walls; it was a home. Erik brushed his thumb over a pencil mark— _Peter, July 1969._

“Bathroom’s up the stairs, second door on the right,” Magda said, coming into the living room and handing him a towel. She was still unsmiling, but her expression was somewhat less hostile now. It was the most he could expect. “You look like shit, Erik. Get yourself presentable before you give my kids nightmares.”

From anyone else the comment would make him bristle, but Magda had more than earned the right to be blunt with him. He was surprised she’d let him go with only one punch, if he were honest.

*

The shower left him exhausted rather than refreshed, washing away the lingering adrenaline in his system alongside the sweat and dust and blood. He rested his head on his forearm, letting the hot water drum between his shoulder blades and circle the drain in pinkish rivulets. When he closed his eyes, he could still see the bright smear of crimson on Charles’s forehead, the splashes of Raven’s blood on the Parisian cobblestones. They shed their blood so easily, all of them.

The sharp rap on the frosted glass startled him back to himself. He hadn’t even felt the bathroom door open. Careless of him; whatever their history, Magda was still a human. He flexed his power against the pipes, the razor in the cabinet. 

“Did you drown in there?” Magda asked. “I found the first-aid kit, and some clothes that might fit you.”

He waited, expecting her to leave him to it, but she jerked the shower door open impatiently after a moment. “Come on, let’s get you stitched up before the kids come home.”

“I can manage,” he replied stiffly, turning off the water with a pulse of his power and reaching past her for the towel. She took advantage of the proximity between them to touch his neck, probing at the edges of the bullet wounds, making him hiss between his teeth. “I’ve done it before.”

“I can see that.” Her fingers dropped from his neck (gunshot wound) to his collarbone (twice-broken), glancing over his upper arm (broken glass) and his side (knife wound, another gunshot, recent bruises from Beast). A history of violence and lessons in mastering his powers was etched across his body in pale scar tissue, mapping the years since they’d met. Her fingers were cool against shower-warmed skin, but Erik caught her wrist. 

“I’m not making any designs on your virtue,” she said, tugging her wrist free and pushing him down on the closed toilet seat. “I was just noticing that you’re bad at accepting help, and worse at asking for it.”

“I don’t need your help.” The words were reflexive. It wasn’t that he avoided help when it suited his needs: he made use of allies when he had them, so long as they remained useful to his goals. Making himself vulnerable by coming to rely on someone’s presence, their help and their lo—it was reckless, and Erik had no patience for it. He had learned to be self-sufficient when he was a child; his life hadn’t let him be anything else. 

Magda gave him a long look, then ran a washcloth under cold water for him to press against his bruised cheek while she sterilized a needle, as if he hadn’t spoken at all. 

“Peter said your friend has a school for...kids like him. Mutants.” She tried the word carefully, as though Erik might turn the needle on her if she caused offense. 

“It’s closed.” And Charles likely wouldn’t take kindly to being called his friend. Erik gritted his teeth as Magda pressed the needle into his flesh, resisting the urge to wrest control of it from her. The smell of blood and antiseptic was sharp in his nostrils. 

Far from the grand descriptions of his utopian campus that Charles had once sketched for him at every opportunity, they hadn’t spoken about the future at all in the brief time they’d had together, save for the future they had been trying to prevent. He had no idea if Charles planned to open the school again—given his incarceration, he hadn’t even known it had failed until a few days ago. Duties discharged, Charles might happily crawl back into the bottle in which he’d spent the last ten years and let that dream die once and for all.

The thought sat uncomfortably with Erik. In saving their future selves and fellow mutants from a human genocide, what might they have lost? Without the sentinel war to bring them together, perhaps mutants were still scattered in the future, still hiding. 

Perhaps he and Charles were still enemies. 

Magda pressed a pad of gauze over the stitches, and then checked the wound on the back of his head to make sure no stitches had popped. “Looks like you’ll live.”

Erik set down the washcloth and gingerly touched the bandage at his throat. He would have to find some way to cover it to avoid attracting attention when he left the state. It would be harder than he thought to leave. Fugitive, terrorist...father.

“If I’d known about Peter, I—” he stopped, not knowing what the end of that sentence was. Maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference at all—he could never have slept easily with Shaw alive. It might have been worse, in fact, to be driven by both the need for revenge and the fear of losing his family again. 

“I tried to tell him he wasn’t the only one, once I knew he was...different. But I never had enough stories about you to satisfy him. He wanted to hear about you lifting the boat out of the Atlantic and carrying it all the way to New York, or making the Statue of Liberty wave as we passed. I don’t know that’s changed, Erik; he’s still young, still prone to hero-worship.” Magda tucked her hair behind her ears and stood. “You want to do something for him, make sure that Professor opens his school again. No kid should have to grow up feeling alone.”

*

He slept on the couch that night, or tried to: he still felt claustrophobic in enclosed spaces, part of him waiting for the doors to slam shut and the latent hum of metal to be silenced. Eventually, he got up and walked out onto the back stoop, turning her words over in his head and twining around his fingers the bullet he’d carried every day since Cuba until the time of his arrest, that he’d reclaimed along with his helmet the moment he was free.

_I thought I was alone._

_You’re not alone. Erik, you’re not alone._

In the morning, eyes gritty from lack of sleep and trying to avoid Peter’s unsubtle staring, Erik grabbed the morning’s newspaper. The headline caught his attention immediately.

MUTANT SAVES PRESIDENT AND CABINET. 

For the first time in ten years, it felt like he could breathe again.

*

Hank’s fur was entirely on end by the time they reached the end of the driveway, and he almost took the door off when he got out of the car. To his credit, he was more gentle in helping Charles into his chair, but—well, Charles appreciated his concern, even as he was humiliated by the necessity of the assistance. He had thought he was past this: the first months after Cuba, before the war, before the serum, had been difficult, but he had adapted to his new limitations when he hadn’t had a choice. Now he did, and he had made his peace with that choice, but it was a very different thing to know he had chosen his powers over his ability to walk than to be helped in front of Erik. He was sitting very nonchalantly on the front step, but Charles knew he had observed everything, had weighed and judged Charles’s decision for himself.

It was little comfort that Erik looked rough. There was a bandage around his neck that was showing faint spots of red, and an impressive bruise was purpling his jaw. He looked tired. Still, Charles felt stripped-down, exposed, in the face of that keen gaze. He felt angry. 

“What are you doing here, Erik?” he asked once he was settled, as much to make Erik wait for him to speak as to keep hold of his own temper. The question was superfluous—Charles could hear the reason in Erik’s mind, and could have intuited it even if he were still on the damn serum—but he wanted to hear the answer aloud.

True to form, Erik deflected the question, standing and holding up a newspaper instead. “It’s a brave new world, Charles,” he said, lips quirking in the faintest shadow of a smile. “You must be proud of her.”

Hank bristled at Erik’s sardonic tone, but Charles could hear the sincerity behind it. Though he couldn’t read the newspaper story without rolling forward to take the newspaper from Erik’s hand, he stayed where he was: the headline was sufficient. “Mutant Saves President and Cabinet” it read, human acknowledgement and appreciation of mutant existence in large black type. Brave new world indeed. 

_Tis new to thee_ , Charles thought. He was proud, yes, but more than that he was relieved. He and Hank hadn’t dared turn on the radio on their trip home; after everything else, the possibility that Raven’s choice to turn away from violence might mean nothing had been too much to face. Erik might be surprised that the world had decided to treat mutants as individuals based on their actions, that the same paper that celebrated Raven would feature another headline: “World Leaders Unite to Find ‘Magneto,’” but the vindication was, for Charles, something of a sad one. It was exactly what he had been trying to tell Erik throughout the course of their short-lived friendship.

“How fortunate that you didn’t kill her in Paris,” he said at last, looking up from the paper. Erik’s faint smile faltered, and Charles looked away, back over his shoulder. “Hank, if you’d be so kind?” There was only a slight step up into the mansion from this entrance, but it was more than Charles felt he could handle at the moment. 

“Let me.” Erik raised one hand without waiting for permission, and Charles felt his powers surround the chair, lifting it easily off the gravel. 

“I don’t want your help,” Charles spat, _pushing_ Erik back with his mind. “You’ve already done enough.” His vehemence sent Erik sprawling, and his wheelchair dropped heavily back onto the ground when it was ripped free of Erik’s control.

This time, Erik’s expression stayed completely impassive. Even without touching his mind, however, Charles could feel the barriers coming up between them, pre-emptive defenses to keep him out. Some things never changed. 

Erik stood up slowly as Hank wheeled Charles into the house, but he didn’t make another move toward them. 

“I have nowhere else to go.”

Simple, direct, and piercing: only Erik could make the truth feel like a bullet. It was the answer Charles had heard in his mind the moment he’d seen him, coloured with loss and a sensation of being cornered and, faintly, something very much like hope. 

He had thought he wanted to hear Erik admit that vulnerability, but the words hanging in the air only made the distance between them more apparent. He exhaled shakily and looked down at his hands, white-knuckled on the arms of his chair.

“That isn’t my problem.”

Even after Hank had shut the door between them and wheeled Charles into the library, it took some time before he could loosen his grip. He wondered if Erik could feel him letting go.

*

It rained heavily that night.

Ordinarily, Charles enjoyed a good summer storm, especially when observed from the comfort of the library with a good book and a good scotch for company. Tonight, however, the tempest outside just added to the heavy and oppressive air over the mansion, too silent, too big, too empty without students to fill it or the serum to cram Charles’s wandering mind firmly back into his skull. 

He was in desperate need of a drink; he knew there was a bottle’s worth of good reasons not to attempt to have even one. It had been years since he’d lived in this house without a purpose (even if that purpose was to crawl as deeply into the liquor cabinet as he could) and Charles felt at loose ends in his sobriety. 

After snapping at Hank for the third time over something entirely trivial, Charles excused himself to bed with the apology that he was not fit for company. Hank, of course, accepted the apology far more graciously than Charles deserved—which, frankly, was part of the problem: Hank was always gracious and self-effacing when Charles was horrible to him, which only served to add a layer of guilt to his self-loathing—though the speed with which he retreated to his laboratory showed just how poor a companion Charles had been. 

The silence after he left was even louder than Hank’s small talk had been. 

Unable to sleep, unwilling now to drug himself into an approximation of it, Charles wandered the halls like a gothic heroine or a rather maudlin ghost, past closed doors of bedrooms dusty with disuse. The mansion held little resemblance even to a home now, much less a school. 

He finally ended up downstairs again, in the library, once he managed to acknowledge to himself that it was in fact the room he had been avoiding. There was almost a decade’s worth of articles from _The Lancet_ to catch up on, and Hank had subscribed to the new _Clinical Genetics_ , which sounded promising. Now that mutants were in the public eye, his doctoral thesis might draw some renewed attention: he didn’t want his research to be too laughably outdated. 

The chessboard, long abandoned by the window, caught his eye as he attempted to navigate the maze of empty bottles and strewn papers with his wheelchair. He ignored it in favour of reaching his desk, pulling the shawl off the lamp—how on Earth that had ended up there?—to get some light and attempt to take stock of the accumulated journals. They were stacked haphazardly, some with rings of condensation warping the covers, others complete write-offs after a spill of some kind—tea, possibly, though scotch was just as likely. 

The chessboard kept drawing his eye. He and Erik had never finished their last game. In the wake of their well-worn debate over Shaw, Charles had tried valiantly to focus on the game, but with Erik thinking increasingly graphic thoughts and smirking every time Charles had shifted in his chair, he had been quite outmatched. He’d never reset the pieces after... _after_ , and they’d stayed frozen in place, accumulating dust, awaiting Charles’s next move.

Charles picked a journal at random and dove into it. Chase, Murphy, and Bolling’s ENCU scoring system sounded quite fascinating. Certainly, it was more useful than his self-indulgent ruminations. 

_An algorithm for carrying out this kind of calculation for fully penetrant X-linked recessive conditions has—_. 

His eyes strayed back to the chessboard. Damn Erik anyway for showing up on his doorstep. The utter arrogance of the man, coming back the day after he’d almost doomed them all. 

_An algorithm for fully penetrant X-linked recessive conditions has been published (Murphy 1970a). In the present—_

And what of it that Charles had hoped he, Raven, and Erik could reconcile at some point, that he’d told Hank there would be a time when they were all together again? 

_In the present paper we shall present a generalized version of this—_. 

He hadn’t meant “immediately.” In Charles’s mind, that indeterminate time was something more along the lines of “in a few months or a year, once Erik realized what a colossal ass he had been and Charles had stopped wanting to punch him again.” Possibly more than a year, for the latter. 

_In the present paper we shall present a generalized version of this algorithm suitable for any Mendelizing condition with or without full penetrance in the heterozygotes._

Charles realized he had not processed any of what he had just read. Damn it. He went back to the beginning of the first paragraph. _In genetic counseling, a prediction is made about the genotypes of the future offspring—_

His eyes went to the chessboard again. 

Enough. He set down the journal and rolled over to the board, intending to put the pieces, and thoughts of Erik by extension, back into their proper place—

—he dropped a pawn, startled, when the metal _thrummed_ in his hand. 

Cautiously, he picked up another piece—a black knight this time, one of Erik’s pieces—and felt the same vibration in it, tingling up through his fingers. Now that it had been drawn to his attention, Charles didn’t know how he had previously missed the low hum in the room, the faint vibration in his own wheelchair. It was everywhere. Hank felt it too, if the sudden burst of shock and concern was any indication. It wasn’t threatening, it wasn’t even unpleasant, but Charles felt his stomach twist as he rolled over to the window. 

“Yes, it’s Erik,” he said the moment Hank opened the door, not bothering with any preamble as the questions were loud in Hank’s mind. “And no, he isn’t going to attack us.”

He couldn’t see much through the rain; even the few lights on in the mansion did more to define the edges of the darkness than to pierce it. It was enough to see a vague silhouette, enough to see that Erik was just...sitting there on his front step. A crack of lightning, and Charles could see a flash of hands resting palms-up on his knees, the slight incline of his head, turned up to the sky, before he was reduced to shadow once more.

“What is he doing then?” Hank grumbled, walking over to the desk and neatly arranging Charles’s scattered journals. Even in his human form, Hank maintained an aversion to the rain, as though his fur were as much a mental as an intermittent physical state. “Hopefully trying to drown himself.”

“Hank,” the reprimand was absent, instinctual. Charles moved as close to the window as he could, waiting for another burst of lightning to provide some illumination. “I think he’s...meditating.” 

“You’re not serious.”

Charles ignored the comment. He’d made a promise to himself never to go into Erik’s mind again, but it was a promise that he had broken twice-over already. He brought his fingers to his temple and reached out, tentatively—

The night lit up around him, disorienting and synesthetic as Charles struggled to make sense of Erik’s perception. He could feel-see everything, from the chaos of the thunderstorm’s electromagnetic energy to the stable tug of the Earth’s polarity: nature balanced perfectly between rage and serenity. It was light and sound and colour intermingling, and it was unexpectedly beautiful. 

“Professor?” Hank sounded worried, as though it wasn’t the first time he’d called Charles. “Are you all right?”

Charles blinked, and dropped his hand from his temple to wipe quickly at his eyes. “I’m fine, Hank. We aren’t in any dang—well. No immediate danger, at least.” He hadn’t expected Erik’s mind to feel so peaceful, powers stretched out to their fullest simply for the joy of it, rather than with furious intent. Unsettled by the incongruity, Charles brushed Erik’s mind again, turning his attention this time to the mansion, lit up in intricate detail from its metal structure and Cerebro, down to the chandeliers, the kitchen appliances...Charles’s wheelchair pressed against the window.

He jerked back, colour rising in his cheeks. The knight in his hand was blood-warm from his grip, still vibrating faintly with Erik’s focus, and it suddenly seemed almost obscene. Charles hurriedly set it down on the windowsill and cleared his throat. “I suppose we had best let him in.”

*

As Hank was able to move much more quickly, especially when he was angry, Charles could hear him already arguing with Erik before he even so much as reached the foyer. The hum of metal had stopped, presumably the moment Hank had opened the door, and Charles was keenly aware of its absence as he wheeled himself down the hall.

“What part of ‘not our problem’ don’t you understand? You aren’t welcome here, Erik.”

“I believe the subject of my welcome is up to Charles to decide. Or has this become the McCoy Institute in the past ten years?”

There was a decidedly Beastly edge to Hank’s voice. “Has that helmet of yours impeded brain function? Our conversation this afternoon was pretty unequivocal. He asked you to leave.”

“No,” Erik replied mildly, “he didn’t. And the last time I left Charles without him explicitly asking me to do so, he accused me of abandoning him. I won’t let that happen again.”

“And I’m not about to let you hurt him again!”

Fortunately, Charles reached them before there was any bloodshed...not that he was certain he wouldn’t cause any himself. 

Erik was soaked through, hair and clothing plastered against his skin and a puddle forming under his shoes, more like he’d been pulled from a lake or The Gulf of Mexico than in from the rain. It seemed to be a theme for all of their beginnings: Charles wondered which of them was drowning this time. 

Whatever retort Erik was about to make died unspoken when he caught sight of Charles. He dismissed Hank entirely and turned toward him, raising his hands palm-out in a gesture of surrender. “No helmet, and you clearly have your powers back. Perhaps this time we can start without you punching me.”

“Perhaps,” Charles allowed. “Or perhaps I’ll ask Hank to punch you for me. I think we can agree you deserve it.” He wasn’t done with being angry with Erik, not by far. 

Erik glanced sidelong at Hank (who clearly did agree that he deserved to be punched) then back to Charles, considering, before he inclined his head slightly. A small concession, but it was enough to make the tightness in Charles’s throat ease somewhat. 

“Good. We’ll talk in the library.” Charles gestured for Erik to precede him down the hallway, certain that he would remember the layout of the house well enough. Though he had little desire to let Erik wander around unsupervised for long, he paused by Hank, bringing his hand up to his temple. He had no illusions that this conversation with Erik would go well, but adding Hank to an already volatile mix seemed unwise. _Could you fetch a dose of serum from your laboratory, please?_ He eyed the puddle of rainwater left on the floor. He didn’t give a damn about Erik’s comfort, but there was the antique furniture to consider. _And a towel._

Hank looked past Charles to where Erik was had stopped in the hallway, watching them. “Are you sure you want to be left alone with him?” he asked aloud, as though Charles weren’t more than capable of plucking the question from his mind. He wanted Erik to hear.

Charles opted not to play into Hank’s posturing, though the side-benefit of taking the higher road was that Erik couldn’t hear his response to the question. _I’ll be fine, thank you._

He wheeled himself over to Erik, seeing him take in with surprise how dreary the entrance hall had become, the old wood dusty and unpolished, the chandelier hanging askew from Hank’s occasional acrobatics, the cobwebs and the cracked banister. In Erik’s mind the reality of the house as it had become was overlaid with tissue-thin memories, tinged with golden nostalgia, of the way it had been. 

_What happened to this place?_

It was an idle thought, not directed at Charles but he answered anyway as he reached the library and opened the door. “Cuba happened, Erik. Then, by the time I was in any state to start the school properly, Vietnam happened.” 

Erik looked around the room dubiously as he entered, and Charles saw what it must look like through his eyes, the debris of depression that cluttered every surface, a far cry from the cozy room of leather and polished bookcases it once had been. 

“So you gave up after one semester,” Erik picked up a stack of books from a chair—his old chair—and raised an eyebrow at the empty bottles it unearthed, “and let the place fall apart instead.” he set the books and the bottles next to the chair and dropped elegantly into it. He looked utterly at home there, sitting next to the chessboard, a window into Charles’s past that he thought he had boarded up permanently. 

Feeling his cheeks grow hot, Charles wheeled himself around behind his desk instead of taking his old spot across from Erik. He needed some distance, the veneer of authority the desk could give him. “Yes, thank you very much for that observation; you’re quite keen,” he snapped, deciding to hell with it and pouring himself a drink. “It’s of no consequence in any case: despite the sign you decided to re-affix to my gate, the school is closed.”

Erik looked up from his contemplation of the chessboard. “Surely you’re going to reopen it.”

It wasn’t a question, so Charles didn’t bother to give him an answer. The subject of the school was not one he intended to discuss with Erik-bloody-Lehnsherr even on a good day, which this decidedly was not. He held Erik’s gaze, daring him to comment. 

Erik shrugged and looked away toward the window where the rain was still pounding against the glass. After a moment he raised one hand with a faint frown, and the knight Charles had left on the sill floated over to rest in his palm. He regarded the chessboard for another long moment, before unerringly placing the piece back into the position it had held for the past ten years. 

Charles could almost feel the lingering stroke of Erik’s fingers on the metal as he took his hand away. His chest felt tight.

“Are you all right?”

When Charles glanced up, Erik gestured toward his forehead, and Charles found himself instinctively mirroring the gesture, ghosting his fingers lightly over the contusion from the part of the stadium that had landed on him. It had long stopped bleeding, but was still tender. He flinched and dropped his hand, took another sip of his drink.

“I didn’t know you planned to be at the White House for Trask’s display,” Erik continued, undeterred by Charles’s silence. “From what you’d told me about your time-traveling friend, you’d achieved what you wanted once Raven left Paris.”

“Would knowing have made a difference?”

Erik hesitated, which was an answer in and of itself. “I didn’t intend for you to be harmed.”

Charles choked on a laugh and raised his glass in an ironic salute. “Oh, that’s good, Erik. You may not intend to hurt the people around you, but you always manage to, don’t you.” 

Behind the facade of Erik’s neutral expression, guilt mingled with frustration and uncertainty. Finally, he looked down and away, eyes catching on the chessboard. He swallowed, then raised his eyebrows at Charles. “As I recall, it was your move.” 

It was a peace offering, of sorts, an invitation to table this conversation once again until they found their footing with each other. It was enough to give Charles some of his composure back. “We aren’t going to put this conversation off with chess, Erik.” The distraction had worked on the plane, in neutral territory. It wouldn’t work here, not where they’d played together in happier times.  
“As you like.” Erik gestured, and the pieces slid back across the board into their starting positions, erasing ten years of history in an instant. He sat back in his chair and spread his hands. “You asked me here to talk, Charles; by all means, carry on.”

“What you said to Hank,” Charles began, halting, “about Cuba. What did you—?” he broke off when Hank came into the room at last as though summoned by his name, carrying the supplies Charles had requested. Hank threw the towel at Erik carelessly, but set the syringe down on Charles’s desk with reluctant care. 

Erik wasn’t so easily deterred, his only acknowledgement of Hank the way his hands gripped the towel, white-knuckled. “Charles, I—”

“Thank you, Hank,” Charles said quickly, cutting across whatever it was Erik had been about to say. Even assuming Erik would tell him the truth, on reflection, he wasn’t certain he wanted to hear the answer to his question. 

The look Erik shot Hank was dagger-sharp, but when it became clear that Hank had no intention of leaving them alone again any time soon, if ever again, he huffed a sigh and perfunctorily dried off his hair before wrapping the towel around his shoulders. 

“So, to business then. You can stay—” Charles held up a hand immediately as his mind was swamped with Hank’s disapproval, Erik’s cautious relief. “You can stay until the search for you has died down sufficiently that it’s safe for you to leave. I have some conditions, Erik, and they are non-negotiable. I don’t want to talk to you. If possible, I don’t even want to see you.” He held Erik’s gaze seriously, resting his arms on the desk and leaning forward. Erik had gone pale, highlighting the bruises on his face and the shadows under his eyes. He had to be freezing in his wet clothing. He didn’t make any outward sign of discomfort, however, and he heard Charles out without interjection, remaining completely impassive. When Charles raised his eyebrows, waiting for a response, Erik nodded curtly. Good. It was a start. “We are not friends, you and I, not anymore. Let’s not pretend otherwise.”

That stirred Erik out of his unnatural composure, and a muscle twitched in his jaw. “You want me to sit by in silence while you drug yourself back into a stupor?” he asked, nodding toward the syringe on Charles’s desk. “I can’t promise you that.”

Hank shifted uncomfortably, and Charles sent a mental pulse of reassurance toward him. Charles’s addiction issues were not Hank’s fault, nor were they the subject under discussion. “No, Erik; the serum is my third condition.”

Erik’s mind went suddenly, terrifyingly quiet in Charles’s perception, and all the metal in the room _twitched_.

“Don’t ask that, Charles.”

“I’m not asking. That’s my final condition on you staying here, Erik; accept it or not as you like.”

That broke the calm spell, and Erik’s consciousness slammed back into Charles’s awareness, bright and crackling with fury. The storm momentarily threatened to overwhelm Charles’s thoughts, drowning everything else out. But the anger was just a front, so much distraction. There was a dark chasm lurking under that anger, and that was what was truly frightening. Charles pulled his mind back before the ground could give way under his feet and send him toppling into that abyss, but even in the safety of his own mind, he could feel the echo of Erik’s deep-seated horror. 

Erik surged to his feet, and Hank immediately moved to intercept him. But there was no attack, despite the warning jangle of the chandelier, the chess pieces, the syringe on Charles’s desk. 

“Is this your plan, Charles?” he demanded. “Convince me to drug myself, become as helpless and weak as any human, so I’m unable to put up much of a fight? It would be quite a coup for the CIA to bring me in; it might almost compensate for the fiasco they caused in Cuba.” He sneered. “Do you think they’ll welcome you back for it, Charles? _Beast_? You and Hank might be so desperate for the approval of humans that you’ll carve out part of yourself to blend in, but you’ll always be monsters to them.”

Charles had never heard so much anger in his voice, so much contempt, not even on the rare occasions that he’d spoken about Shaw. Erik’s pale eyes were empty, flat and cold with his fury. In that moment, he was a perfect stranger, hard and remote and untouchable, so unlike the man Charles had once kept from drowning. Even at their first meeting Erik had seemed closer to him then than he was now. 

“You can think whatever you want of me,” he said once Erik was done, trying to keep his voice calm in deference to the glimpse of the fear he’d seen underpinning all of Erik’s rage. “But the last time I put my trust in you unreservedly—after I broke you out of prison, might I remind you—you tried to murder my sister. You almost destroyed everything we were fighting to protect.”

“I was trying to save all of us!” Erik roared over Charles’s words and the groan of straining metal. 

“ _I’m not finished._ ” Charles reached into Erik’s mind and made his knees give out, then silenced his voice when Erik tried to yell at him again. God help him, he’d never abused his powers like this before, but Erik would sit, and he would _listen_ , and Charles would make sure of it. 

“After all that you’ve done, you came here to ask me to trust you again, to let you into my home. I am not going to betray you, Erik, but if you expect me to offer you my trust, you will have to extend me the same courtesy. If you can’t give me that much, then you can go.”

With the flush of his initial anger receding, Erik’s pallor was even more stark, his breath coming far too quickly. Charles’s heart thudded under his ribs, but he betrayed no outward sign of his tension. After what he had almost done to Raven, what he _had_ done to Logan, Erik hadn’t left him any other choice. He had said his piece: it was up to Erik whether or not he would accept it. Charles wasn’t sure what result he was hoping for, in setting a condition beyond what he honestly expected Erik to accept.

Slowly, the syringe lifted off Charles’s desk, turning in the air before being summoned at last to Erik’s waiting hand. 

_Don’t ask this of me, Charles._

The thought was barely audible, tinged with a dull fear that flickered at the edge of Charles’s mind like the wings of a caged bird. Charles didn’t reply, but nor did he flinch away from Erik’s gaze. 

Erik laughed, a horrible, hollow sound, and squeezed his hand into a fist, flexing his arm to bring up a vein. “You really don’t know what you’re asking,” he said, shaking his head. 

Charles looked away as he injected himself. Only days out from his own last dose, he didn’t want to see Erik shoot up, not when part of him was craving more than ever the detached lassitude the drug brought in the first moments of blissful disconnect from the psychic noises of the world. He finished his abandoned drink instead, giving them both a moment of ostensible privacy. Gradually, the angrily shaking metal in the room shuddered and went still. In the ghostly reflection of the window, he watched as Erik dragged one hand through his towel-mussed hair, and then rose unsteadily. He swayed a bit on his feet, and had to grip the arm of the chair hard for balance. 

“Careful,” Hank said, reaching out to help steady him, much to Erik’s—and Hank’s own—surprise. Flustered at his own impulse to be helpful, Hank retreated to the safety of a lecture. “You might be a bit off-balance until your mind learns to compensate for the absence of the Earth’s magnetic fields.”

“It had the last ten years to learn to compensate,” Erik snarled, shrugging off Hank’s hand. “I’ll manage.”

“I was just trying to help.”

Hank backed off, but Charles could feel his hurt. It wasn’t personal, he could tell: Erik’s mind was fragmented, off-kilter, constantly reaching for something that was now out of his grasp to ground him. 

“If you want to help, you’ll destroy every last drop of that _verfluchte Scheißdreck_ , and any record you have of its formula,” Erik retorted, still leaning heavily against the chair. “You think your CIA friends won’t have figured out you were experimenting with something like this? Men like Trask will spend millions to obtain it, by any means necessary. Friendship and private property signs won’t protect you, not when you’ve single-handedly created a weapon even better than the sentinels to destroy us.”

“You can show Erik to his room, Hank,” Charles interjected without turning away from the window, before Erik could upset the poor boy any further. “And feel free to ignore his paranoia.”

“Paranoia,” Erik echoed, darkly amused. “Two of your students were butchered, after all your assurances that humans would not identify us, exterminate us. But do carry on in your naive optimism, Charles.”

Images flickered unbidden across Charles’s mind, overflowing with anger and loss. A glass wall, and the trophies underneath: a damaged yellow and blue flight suit, a wing like that of a dragonfly, a helmet. A Reichmark. Charles’s hand clenched around his glass, and he looked down at it instead of meeting Erik’s eyes in his reflection in the window. “I did tell you you were right, Erik. Does it matter to you, or do you prefer your own narrative because it so nicely absolves you of responsibility for everything that you’ve done?”

“I didn’t come here for absolution.”

It was the first lie Erik had told since returning. Charles wondered if he was even aware of it. 

“First condition, Erik.” 

After a long moment, Erik nodded, and left. Charles poured himself another drink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Definition of Kintsugi: http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.ca/2014/05/kintsugi-repair-of-broken-pottery.html
> 
> Erik and Magda's conversation on the boat: “How are you doing that? It’s a trick, isn’t it. Teach me.” / “I don’t know how I can do it. I just...feel it.” / “Do it again? I want to see.”
> 
> The paper Charles tries (and fails) to read: Chase, G. A., Murphy, E. A. and Bolling, D. R. (1971), The ENCU scoring system. Clinical Genetics, 2: 141–148. doi: 10.1111/j.1399-0004.1971.tb00269.x


	2. Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content note: this chapter contains a scene where consent, though technically given, is dubious. Skip to the last few paragraphs of the chapter after the long, italicized scene set in DC if you'd rather not read that. This chapter also has an explicit sex scene with enthusiastic consent.

II

_The room is white, stark and bare, harshly illuminated. There are no shadows; the corners are flattened and depthless. No sound, no air, no space, vision washed-out until it is indistinguishable from blindness._

_He vanishes slowly. First they take his name along with his freedom when they bury him alive. Then they take his senses one by one: encased in this plastic tomb, he cannot hear, he cannot see, he cannot_ feel _. His voice, the few times he uses it, is swallowed by the blank and hungry walls. There is no fighting. There is nothing to fight with or against._

_He is erased by degrees, by the passage of days he cannot track, the grey of his clothes melting into the walls, the floor, until he is no longer aware of himself beyond the weight of the numbers on his chest._

_“It’s a fascinating specimen, number 001. It seems a waste of the American People’s tax dollars to keep it alive when it could be put to better use in my research.”_

“Gene sind der Schlüssel der das Tor zu einem neuem Zeitalter öffnet, Erik.”

*

Charles woke suddenly, telepathy flung wide in instinctive self-defense against the sound of Shaw’s patronizing voice in his ear. For a moment he was disoriented, mind stretched to the limits of the house but not encountering any threat, and for a second’s heart-stopping panic he thought, _the helmet_.

The moment passed as his waking mind remembered. Shaw was dead and, moreover, had never spoken German in Charles’s presence. The helmet had passed to Erik, but was now downstairs in a laboratory for Hank to analyze. Charles was in his room, heart thudding with adrenaline and sheets drenched with sweat, but he was safe. 

He had forgotten how vividly Erik dreamed. 

Even knowing intellectually that there was no real threat beyond Erik’s nightmares, it still took a few minutes for his heart rate to begin to slow. Seeking after the drowsiness that was now eluding him,  
Charles shifted and tried to get comfortable once more. His sweaty pyjamas he awkwardly tugged off and tossed aside, but the sheets would have to wait for the morning. He pushed his flattened pillow back into shape, settled back, and closed his eyes. The house was utterly silent save for the ticking of the clock on his bedside table, and he tried to relax, letting the vigilance of his telepathy go soft and dreamy. Hank’s mind was buzzing with dreams and ideas, Erik’s at war with itself—not peaceful, but at least familiar. 

_Just a dream_ , he thought hazily in Erik’s direction, then, satisfied, he let himself drift. 

At the edge of his awareness he felt Erik snap back into consciousness, felt him reach for the metal in the house, ready to attack even at the disorienting moment of waking. The subsequent bright surge of panic knocked Charles back again from the hazy border at the edge of sleep. He swore under his breath and cracked his eyes open, staring at the shadows of the trees moving back and forth across his ceiling as he felt Erik reach out for his powers again, and again, panic blurring first into anger, and then into a desperation that held the same psychic resonance as the memory of Shaw’s voice. Even as Erik’s rational mind recalled the serum that was blocking him, he kept clawing mental fingers at the drugged wall separating him from his powers. 

Charles rolled his head to one side and looked at the chair next to his bed, debating. Then, not knowing if the queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach was Erik’s or his own, he furled his mind in on itself and tried to go back to sleep. 

It was a long time in coming.

*

Days passed into weeks.

Charles retreated into Cerebro for hours at a time, quickly wearing away the dust and unfamiliarity of long years. It wasn’t hiding _per se_ ; it was...exercising. Ten years of disuse had softened the hard-won range and strength of his telepathy, and he had a lot of ground to recover. He’d so confidently told Sean his powers were a muscle once upon a time, and then had promptly let his own atrophy. 

Whatever glimpse his future self had given him of the restored Xavier Institute, Charles had no intention of using his powers to identify and recruit mutant children ever again. Even if he had felt up to facing the world behind his walls again, the school was, as he had told Erik, closed. The man who had shown him the school of Charles’s future and his own past was gone now. In fact, outside of Charles’s memory, he had never existed, his version of the future ended before it had ever begun. Charles had no obligation to him now.

Despite wanting to distance himself from promises he no longer wished to keep, he wished Logan were still there, to give him a conduit to his future self again. Even just a glimpse into his future as it now stood could reassure him he hadn’t failed in his task and, just as importantly, show him what it was he was supposed to be working _toward_ rather than merely what he was supposed to prevent. But Erik had ensured that would be impossible: Logan was gone, the future was closed to him, and Charles was left only with his much-battered faith. 

And so Cerebro remained for practice alone, to keep his mind keen. That it kept him far away from Erik, who refused to venture below ground at all, was happy coincidence. 

Not that Charles even saw much of Erik when he emerged from Cerebro, temples aching and mind feeling bruised. His presence in the house was no more than shadows on the wall of the cave, so to speak: in a hint of cologne in the kitchen when Charles made his tea; in disturbed dust and books taken or re-shelved in the library; in snatches of conversations with Hank, always argumentative, heard from another room. It was like having a ghost in the house, really—a well-read and surly ghost. 

A ghost who dreamed of white rooms and a stillness so absolute it was like death. 

Oversensitive as his powers were from training, Charles found it harder and harder to shield his unconscious mind from Erik’s nightmares. Erik’s mind pulled his under every night; Charles’s pulled them both back out. It was, he reflected, a rather bitter microcosm of their entire history. 

That there were options available to him—a mild dose of serum before he slept, a reduction of his daily time spent in Cerebro—that he opted not to pursue, Charles chose not to examine too closely. He had more pressing concerns to deal with. 

Just as his mind had to be retrained, so did his hands, gone tender and soft as any academic’s once more after years of being able to walk again. He boasted a few callouses from handling a pen (or a bottle), but after weeks of wheeling himself up and down the halls of the Westchester house, his palms were blistered, the skin gone pink and puffy. There were alternatives, of course—he had his motorized wheelchair, and Hank would be only too happy to assist him in getting about—but the idea of asking for help, from either man or machine, was galling. And so he pushed himself until he couldn’t ignore the throbbing in his hands any longer. 

To his chagrin, Charles had long since abdicated the responsibility of looking after himself to Hank. For the same reason that he wouldn’t ask Hank to push his chair, he preferred not to wheel himself down to the infirmary to let Hank patch up his hands: it would be simpler, and Hank’s expertise would only cost Charles a lecture on not pushing himself so hard in future, and Charles’s pride rebelled at the very thought of it. 

With part of his mind monitoring Hank’s location—if Charles ran into him by accident, his pride would end up doubly bruised: once for the lecture, and once for Hank’s doleful awareness that Charles had been trying to avoid him—Charles headed up to the kitchen, as quickly and surreptitiously as possible. He knew there was a first-aid kit under the sink in the kitchen; that, moreover, it would be fully stocked and untouched. 

It had been Erik’s idea, back when Charles had been naive and idealistic, and the transformation of their rag-tag collection of teenage mutants into a full-fledged school seemed a _fait accompli_. He had been utterly confident he could make a case to Moira and her superiors of the necessity of such a school. Once they’d demonstrated how useful it was to have the tactical support of a team of mutants, surely the CIA would want to keep them on retainer. And, when not in the field, the children would need to continue their education—Charles had been prepared to argue very persuasively on, and make his cooperation contingent upon, that point. 

_While Charles drafted curriculum ideas over a pot of tea, Erik stocked the kit with Band Aids, gauze, iodine, and Sulfamylon cream —Charles had not been convinced of that last item, given how recently it had been developed, but Erik’s mind was full of fatalistic thoughts about immature teenagers who could generate fire with their abilities._

_“You’re being far too pessimistic, my friend,” Charles said absently, tapping his pen against his notepad. He wondered whether Nabokov or Tolstoy would be more appropriate for the literature curriculum, or if he should have a separate course on Russian Literature altogether. He was certain Erik would have strong opinions on the subject of translation—he would probably expect the students to read everything in its original language. Erik, Charles had very quickly learned, had strong opinions about everything. Certainly this first-aid kit was overkill, given how well-stocked the bunker was now after Alex’s first, rather extraordinary inferno, not to mention the makeshift infirmary Hank was putting together._

_Erik snorted. “Look at the damage they wreaked with a single room and a courtyard at the CIA. It’s practicality, Charles, not pessimism; you’re hardly going to go bankrupt over a few additional supplies.”_

_Charles set down his pen and rested his chin in his hand instead, watching Erik fuss. He knew what darkness informed Erik’s overbearing concern for people he cared about, but couldn’t help but find it rather endearing._

_Endearing, and utterly hypocritical._

_“You pushed Sean off a satellite dish yesterday, you paragon of responsibility.”_

_Erik didn’t look up, but Charles could feel his grin all the same._

As if the memory had summoned him, Erik’s mind was suddenly _there_ , colliding with Charles’s consciousness. He stopped in his tracks, heart pounding at the jarring disconnect where memory and reality diverged. That afternoon, Erik’s mind had been warm and familiar, brushing against Charles’s with such exasperated fondness that he’d dared to hope might be enough to make him stay. That afternoon, as he recalled, had ended with a memorable shag in the library, too. The children has been outside, and they hadn’t even made it to the couch. 

Now, Erik’s mind was a thunderstorm under glass, rumbles of frustration lit with an occasional flicker of pain, all of it so tightly constrained that it gave Charles a headache. 

He turned around, resigned to finding Hank and enduring his concern...and stopped. There was ice in the pit of his stomach and his hands were tight on the wheels of his chair. And he was angry, he realized. It was something of a revelation to put a name to the stomach-clenching feeling even the most innocuous interactions, like finding his books re-shelved by author rather than by title, provoked. He had told himself he could be dispassionate about Erik’s presence in his home, but it was a lie. He was angry that Erik was here to begin with, irritated that he was letting Erik influence his choices, and now furious that the thought of seeing him again made his pulse quicken with nerves. It was his bloody house; if they couldn’t behave like adults for the minute it would take Charles to fetch what he needed, then Erik would damn well be the one to leave. 

The kitchen was bright with afternoon sunlight and the rich scent of coffee. Erik was sitting at the table, scowling as he awkwardly prodded at his right hand with a pair of tweezers. Braced as he’d been for a confrontation, the lack of acknowledgement, to say nothing of the quotidian scene, was momentarily jarring. Charles hesitated just inside the doorway, waiting, before he remembered that Erik would not have been able to feel his wheelchair approaching. 

He cleared his throat quietly as he wheeled in further to alert Erik to his presence, but still felt him startle, the immediate mental analysis of everything in reach as a potential weapon, before he realized it was Charles who had interrupted him. Charles wasn’t certain whether he ought to be more insulted that Erik felt vulnerable to attack in his house, or that he apparently didn’t consider Charles himself to be a threat. 

He did his best to set his irritation aside, but any hope of sparing them both a prolonged encounter vanished before he came much further into the room. Of course, having put together the first-aid kit in the kitchen, Erik would think to look there first when one was needed. It was open on the kitchen table now, half-hidden under discarded sections of a newspaper (ominous) and behind a coffee mug (unsurprising). 

More concerning than an injury itself, given that Erik was clearly not at death’s door, was the question of what had caused it. Charles had invited a wanted terrorist into his house and then had proceeded to leave him to his own devices for weeks. Even without his powers Erik was dangerous, and only a very foolish man would forget that. 

Erik shook his hand out with a grimace, then took a sip of his coffee. “Hello to you too, Charles,” he said, terse. “Did you want something, or are you just making sure I’m not...murdering puppies, or whatever it is you think I do for fun?”

Charles looked at what was laid out on the table as he moved closer—rubbing alcohol, the pair of tweezers Erik had now abandoned in favour of coffee, a few scattered band-aids—and raised an eyebrow. “I’m certain you’d have a less convoluted method of going about it,” he returned, equally curt, “No doubt from long practice.” He nodded to the first-aid kit. “I’ll need that when you’re finished with it.”

Erik eyed him for a moment, then shrugged. “Use it now. There’s more coffee if you want.”

Unexpectedly, the offer made Charles flinch. It was the casual tone in which it was delivered when he was already on edge, Erik offering Charles his own damn coffee in his own damn home, as if he had any claim to either. As if he hadn’t walked away from all of them and broken everything. 

Apparently Erik had been expecting a response, as he sighed and pushed back from the table as though to leave when Charles remained silent. He tried to find his voice, wanting an answer before Erik left and they went back to ignoring each other, but it was caught in the tight clench of his throat. 

There was the sound of the cupboard being opened, and Charles turned to see Erik reaching up above the stove, pushing a few boxes and jars out of the way. There was a flicker of confusion against Charles’s mind from him, and all the taut anger that had squeezed his ribcage and closed up his throat dissolved at once into something messier, more complicated, somewhere between frustration and sorrow. 

“No—” he had to stop, swallow past the lump in his throat. “Down and to the left,” he went on, and now his voice sounded normal, thank God. “Hank moved everything.”

He was grateful that Erik didn’t turn around; the tension in his spine spoke volumes. He didn’t say anything, just firmly shut the cupboard above the stove before stooping to retrieve the kettle and teapot from their new location, one Charles could easily reach from his chair. 

“This violates two of your conditions,” Erik noted, all of his earlier sarcasm now stripped from his voice. He rummaged in the cupboard, pulling out a few tins and popping them open to examine their contents while Charles wheeled himself over to the kitchen table. He held one up, questioning. “Earl Grey?”

“Please.” Charles pushed some of the papers aside, clearing a spot for himself. Erik had clearly been taking advantage of Hank’s pack-rat tendencies to bring himself up to date with the world; the papers on the table ranged back to the beginning of the year, and judging from the yellowing newsprint stacked neatly on one of the kitchen chairs, there was an archive dating back a decade waiting to be read. Charles raised an eyebrow at Erik’s back. “We can sit in silence and not look at each other, if you’d rather.”

“That might be an improvement.”

Given the way their last few interactions had gone, Charles did not argue the point. Instead, he dragged the first-aid kit over to his side of the table, reading some of the headlines on the discarded newspapers upside-down as he did: “High Court Rules Abortions Legal the First Three Months,” “Thousands of Homosexuals Hold a Protest Rally in Central Park,” “Five Held in Plot to Bug Democratic Offices Here.” It was a stark reminder of how much had happened since Erik had been in prison; so much joy and sorrow that Charles had been obligated to keep to himself, recluse that he was. Hank, bless him, had not been terribly keen on engaging in political debates even on the rare occasions that Charles wasn’t drunk and moody. The idea of confiding in him his grief and anger over Stonewall, his optimism over Christopher Street, would have been unthinkable. 

Catching sight of Trask’s name, Charles teased out a newer paper from under the others, scanning it with a familiar mixture of dread and hope. But there was nothing about Raven, and the Trask story didn’t have much new information—a trial date had been set, but the rest seemed to be a recap of what scant details were known about his treason. Even the worldwide hunt for Erik had slipped from the front page. Not that governments forgot as quickly as the general public and the media did, but it was good not to see Erik’s mugshot staring up at him in grainy black and white like an accusation.

Charles folded the newspaper carefully and set it aside to retrieve the burn salve and gauze from the kit. He wasn’t entirely certain it would do anything to help, even if it hadn’t been past its expiration date, but at the very least he supposed it wouldn’t cause any further damage. 

To the background sounds of the kettle starting to whistle and the awareness of Erik watching him, Charles slicked the salve on his tender palms and carefully wrapped the gauze around them, or attempted to. The left hand was easy enough, but the right ended up lumpy and bulged no matter how many times Charles attempted it. 

Erik set the mug of tea down in front of him, conspicuously silent. 

“Yes, well, we haven’t all made a career out of patching ourselves up,” Charles replied to the unspoken comment. Possibly attending to his dominant hand second had not been the wisest course of action, but it would serve. Charles didn’t need to impress anyone with his nursing skills. 

“With all the time I spend murdering puppies, it’s a requirement,” Erik deadpanned, resuming his seat across from him. 

Charles almost laughed, the sound catching in his chest as he remembered himself. For a second, it had almost seemed easy, like no time had passed since they’d last sat here together. “Thank you for the tea,” he said, backing away from the echo of remembered intimacy and defaulting instead to the manners drilled into him by a parade of nannies. The bandages made holding the cup a bit ungainly, but Charles managed with both hands cradled carefully around it. He had achieved what he’d come in here for, but he could stay for a while longer, just until he finished his drink. 

Erik glanced up at him briefly. He nodded, before turning his attention back to his hand. Charles felt the abortive grasp for his powers, followed by a flicker of frustration and resignation before he picked up the tweezers by hand again instead. There were a few splinters in his palm, Charles realized. That was all. The mundane reality seemed especially ludicrous in juxtaposition with his earlier assumptions of something more grievous. It was hard to imagine a plot for mass genocide that involved splinters as a hazard. Charles chuckled and hid his smile in his teacup, wryly amused at his own paranoia. 

Erik slammed his hand down onto the table, making Charles jump. Tea slopped over his bandaged hands, scalding, and he dropped the teacup in surprise. It rolled across the table, tea spilling everywhere, and came to rest against the stack of newspapers. 

“I’m glad you find this so fucking amusing,” Erik snapped. “Is that why you’ve finally resurfaced? To gloat?”

The bandages wrapped around his hands were now soaked, but Charles paused in the act of unwinding them at that remark. Even for someone as short-tempered as Erik usually was, the accusation had come out of nowhere, and Charles was caught off-guard by it. He had been too on edge when he’d first entered the kitchen to pay much attention to the details; now, stark in the afternoon sun, he noticed for the first time how haggard Erik still looked, despite the weeks of relative safety and comfort. There were dark shadows under his eyes, and beneath his anger there was a...transparency in the pallor of his skin and in the psychic impression of his thoughts. He was stretched very, very thin. 

“Don’t worry, Charles; you can be satisfied with your shackles. I can’t fe—” an almost unnoticeable hitch, “—move _these_ fucking things, much less anything dangerous.” He tossed down the tweezers and held up his hands, sardonic. “I’m completely tame.”

At one point in his life Charles had thought himself very even-tempered. Somehow, Erik always managed to bring out the worst in him. He took a moment, holding back the instinctive retort. “I wasn’t mocking you, Erik,” he said, picking his words as carefully as steps through a minefield. But there was no being cautious around Erik, who scoffed at Charles’s attempt at explanation. 

“You knew exactly how effective your punishment would be. Perhaps I haven’t been appropriately penitent—tell me, how much longer do you plan to make me grovel? Maybe I should get on my knees and beg,” a mean edge came into his words. “You always did seem to like that.”

Stung, Charles sat back, leaving the bandages in a sodden pile on the table. When he had given Erik his conditions, it hadn’t at all been in order to reduce him somehow, nor to take vengeance. Ultimately, they’d been as much about Charles himself as they had been Erik; he didn’t, couldn’t trust Erik, and didn’t trust himself near him. Strict conditions were the only way they could hope to co-exist, even temporarily. That Erik didn’t realize that—that he preferred to ascribe the worst possible motivations to Charles— _hurt_. That he would take something that had been theirs, something precious and private, and twist it to serve his own anger, was that much worse. 

He closed himself off, falling back into the safety of a professorial tone. “You’re just as capable of maneuvering small metal implements with your hands as with your abilities. Granted, it might be more of an inconvenience—” he stopped, but it was too late to avoid the misstep. 

“An inconvenience,” Erik said flatly, and Charles knew all the metal in the kitchen would be rattling if he were in control of his powers. 

“Erik, I didn’t mean—”

“You cripple me with your fucking drugs and self-righteousness, and you call it an _inconvenience_?”

If he said anything more, Charles didn’t hear it. His hands prickled numbly, and he let them slide from the table, listless. There was a roaring sound in his ears. Everything felt rather surreal and far away: the sunlight, the cooling puddle of tea that was now starting to drip onto the floor, the way Erik’s face fell when he realized what he had said, and to whom. 

“No,” he said faintly. “I don’t call bring crippled an inconvenience, and I don’t take it lightly. How fortunate for you that you have other options.”

“Charles—” Erik began.

“Do you really think me so petty, that I would want to hurt you, get _even_ with you?” Charles looked down at his hands, limp and useless in his lap. 

All of the anger had drained out of the room as abruptly as it had appeared, leaving a vacuum in its wake. Charles found it difficult to breathe and Erik, stricken and silent across from him, seemed no better off. 

“I am angry at you, and I don’t know that I’ll ever stop being angry. I hope I’ll reach a point where I’m entirely indifferent to what you do and who you hurt. But I don’t hate you, Erik, and I don’t want to hurt you.” Charles straightened in his chair, and tried to push his emotions back down into the box in which they’d been locked up for so long. “The world is not out to harm you, old frie—Erik.” He hadn’t caught himself quite in time. Charles saw Erik flinch, whether at the slip or at Charles’s sloppy recovery from it, he wasn’t sure. 

Erik stood and stalked back into the kitchen proper, still not looking in Charles’s direction. Heart in his throat, Charles watched him, knowing that this was important, that if Erik left now with the wreckage of their argument still around them, there would be no coming back from it. Erik would leave, and this time it would be for good, and...and Charles found, somewhat to his own surprise, that he didn’t want things to end. Not yet. 

“The sentinel program has been cancelled,” he said to Erik’s back. “And Trask will be going to prison for quite a long time.”

Erik returned with a cloth and started to mop up the spilled tea. His mind was too locked down for Charles to pick up a sense of what he was thinking, not without obvious intrusion, and Erik still wouldn’t meet his eyes. 

He continued, desperate now, “Change is possible, Erik—you’ve read the papers. A year after Stonewall, the Gay Liberation Day parade started, and has continued every year since, in New York and across the country.” Charles hadn’t attended; hadn’t dared, not on his own, not without his powers. But he’d read the papers every year, and had tried to read past the language of scandal and moral outrage to find some grains of hope. “And the Civil Rights Movement has leapt forward. You would have heard Dr. King’s speech before...before. Did you? It was quite remarkable. But he went on to win the Nobel, and see the passage of a Voting Rights Act....” He reined himself in with difficulty, and put one hand over Erik’s on the table. “My point is, you don’t need to keep fighting.”

There was a bitter edge to Erik’s smile when he finally looked at Charles, forced to by the touch, but he didn’t pull away. Encouraged, Charles turned Erik’s hand over in his own, seeing the abrasions across his palm more closely, the large splinter still embedded in the tender flesh at the base of his thumb. Charles reached across the table with one hand for the tweezers, without letting Erik go. It was the work of a moment to tug it free. 

“You were focussed too much on trying to feel the tip of the metal,” Charles explained as he disinfected the small wound and put a Band-Aid on it, “instead of relying on your eyes. There.” Awkward with the realization that Erik could have done that for himself, Charles let Erik’s hand go a bit too quickly. He smiled, too bright and brittle. “You don’t need to be a professional puppy-killer for bandaging skills after all.”

That, finally, made Erik’s expression soften. 

“Patching up others doesn’t count,” he said grimly, but there was a tiny smile tugging at the edge of his mouth. “That just fits with your SOP of meddling.”

“So that’s the thanks I get for saving you from what was undoubtedly a lethal splinter,” Charles mock-grumbled, grateful that they were once again on solid ground, at least superficially. “Which, I note, you have completely failed to explain.”

Erik didn’t take the bait, instead taking Charles’s hand brusquely in his own and setting about re-doing his bandages. He did so much more quickly and neatly than Charles had managed even with his dominant hand. He tried not to feel too piqued by that. 

“You’re wrong,” Erik said abruptly, as though the words were being torn from him. “Things don’t change, not that easily. Trask’s arrest isn’t the grand gesture on the part of humans toward mutant acceptance that you seem to think, Charles, no more than Dr. King’s speech kept him from being shot, or those parades in New York mean...” he shook his head. 

There was too much fatalism in that sentence for Charles to challenge at once, so he started with what he thought might be the most immediately relevant to Erik. “Trask has been vilified across the country. He’s lost all governmental support—”

“For treason,” Erik interjected. “For selling secrets to the Vietnamese, or trying to.” 

Behind him, Charles saw a flicker of movement, and glanced up to see Hank walk into the kitchen. Hank’s skin swirled with blue, startled and concerned at the sight of them in such close proximity, but Charles shook his head minutely. No, not yet. Not when Erik was still cradling Charles’s now-bandaged hand in his own, unaware of the interruption. 

“If he’d kept his mouth shut, kept his program within U.S. borders, do you think he would be on trial now? They care that he was selling secrets, not that he was butchering innocent—”

Hank snorted. It was quiet, but even a quiet interjection was a bullet to the fragile illusion of privacy they’d been wrapped in. Erik stiffened and dropped Charles’s hand immediately. 

“Hank,” he said by way of greeting, holding Charles’s eyes for a moment before he stood. “You disagree?” The words were deceptively pleasant, but Charles could feel the venom that laced every syllable. 

Hank was pinned under Erik’s gaze like an unfortunate butterfly, caught between Erik’s casual tone and the menace of his smile. He looked briefly to Charles, then pushed his glasses further up his nose. “No, I don’t disagree. He would have lost his funding, at the worst. It’s just that...well, they weren’t exactly innocent either, were they.”

Erik’s smile widened. “I hadn’t realized that vivisection was an appropriate penalty for self-defense. But then, I’m not a scientist like you and Trask.”

“Erik.”

He whirled on Charles, dropping any pretense at good humour. “Is that what you think, Charles? That Emma, Angel, and Azazel _deserved_ to be tortured?”

“I don’t think anyone deserves that, Erik, mutant _or_ human,” Charles returned, but Erik wasn’t listening. 

“And Banshee? Did he deserve Trask?” he put one hand flat on the kitchen table and leaned down into Charles’s space. “What about me?”

“ _Don’t compare yourself to him!_ “ Hank burst out. Erik turned, visibly braced for an attack, but Hank’s voice was thick with the threat of tears, rather than the fury that presaged the Beast. “He wasn’t like any of you. Sean never hurt anyone; he wasn’t a killer.”

Concerned, Charles pushed away from the table to move to his side. Sean been one of the first true friends Hank had ever had, Charles knew. It was hard to believe they had all only known each other for a few weeks, with the bonds they’d formed, but Charles knew what it was like to be a desperately lonely child. Even the earliest overtures of friendship were hoarded, precious and rare as they were. Even a short time of happiness was enough for the isolated to form close attachments. 

Erik stayed where he was, watching them. “Tell me,” he said at last, looking from Hank to Charles, “if Raven had shot the president, would you still welcome her home?” 

The remark was well-aimed, but then Erik was never anything but efficient with his choice of weapons. Charles still missed her so much it cause a physical pain under his ribs: like Hank with Sean, Raven had been his first friend, his first true family. He kept her photograph on his bedside table so he could see her, at least, even if he couldn’t feel her anymore. When she had stayed her hand that afternoon and changed the course of history, he had hoped....

But it was Hank who responded to Erik’s jibe, and Charles heard the echo of his own words to Raven. “Raven was a good person. The Raven we knew wasn’t capable of killing. She wouldn’t be _Raven_ anymore if she did; she’d be...Mystique. What you made her.”

“Everyone is capable of killing,” Erik retorted. “Be grateful you haven’t been put in the position to find that out for yourself.” He turned his attention to Charles. “What a quaint little morality play you’ve set up, where the good are Good and the wicked are Killers. You’ll defend Trask or the men who fired on us in Cuba to the death— _our_ deaths—but condemn any mutant who doesn’t follow your script.”

“It might behoove you to recall that it was Raven committing murder that made the Sentinel Program into something that destroyed us in the future,” Hank snapped back, blue rising under his skin again, his hackles bristling. 

“How fortunate for Raven, then, that you were there to judge and control her actions. Perhaps when Havok comes back, you can tell him that he’s irredeemable too, and send him on his way. Unless you believe soldiers don’t kill.”

“Enough, both of you,” Charles interrupted, far too late. He rubbed the fingers of his bandaged hand against his temple, trying to smooth away a burgeoning headache. He hadn’t expected this to go so far, so quickly, but when Erik felt backed into a corner he always attacked. “Enough. Raven made her own choices, Hank, Erik, as have you both. We all have to live with them.”

Erik’s eyes scanned Charles’s face, but whatever he was searching for there, he didn’t seem to find it. He looked down at the kitchen table, the scattered newspapers and contents of the first-aid kit, and picked up his mug of what had to now be cold coffee. “I’m violating two of your conditions, Charles,” he said, and finished the coffee, set the mug back down on the table. “Excuse me.”

He didn’t walk past them, instead leaving through the French doors onto the terrace. Charles watched him go, feeling strangely heavy. 

Hank was still agitated as he walked over to the table and began to clean up the mess left behind. “What was he doing up here, anyway,” he grumbled, “looking for new targets?” He brusquely swept the papers up into a pile. 

“Hank,” Charles chided, looking away from the doors through which Erik had left. This was not an argument he wanted to get into—he’d had rather enough of arguing at the moment, and though it wasn’t Hank’s fault that he’d set off another one, Charles was not feeling precisely charitable at the moment. “He’s welcome to go about the house as he likes, so long as he continues to take the serum. He needed the first-aid kit. Let that be the end of it.”

“You don’t believe what he said, do you Professor?” Hank asked. His skin had settled back to normal, and he looked a bit forlorn, clutching the pile of newspapers to his chest. The edge of some of them had become soaked with Charles’s spilled tea, and they wilted forward, the type bleeding across the paper. “I’ve always respected your pacifist stance, but you don’t have to forgive him. Killing someone...it isn’t morally justifiable.”

“I believe I’d like you two to stop putting me in the middle of this,” Charles muttered, pressing his fingers more firmly into his temples. 

Hank heard him regardless, and his shoulders hunched up, wounded. Charles let his hands drop back into his lap as Hank silently busied himself cleaning up the table. Hank was a sensitive soul, and he had done so much for Charles. It wasn’t his fault that Charles, despite the wealth of unresolved anger he still held, no longer felt entirely at odds with Erik. He didn’t know what he felt, if he were honest. 

“I’m sorry, Hank; that was unkind of me.” He put one hand on Hank’s arm and gave it a reassuring squeeze. 

“Maybe you don’t remember what you were like after Cuba, Professor,” Hank said, looking down at the table. “Even before the war, before you started to take the serum. I don’t want to see you hurt like that again.”

He did remember; he had just been foolish enough (or arrogant enough) to think no one else had noticed. He had been excited for the future of the school, or had wanted to be, which was surely almost the same thing, and so he had pasted on smiles and kind words and performed the part of a man entirely adjusted and content with his life. How detached he had been, after Erik, after Raven...after Moira. 

“I’m afraid you may have to let me make my own mistakes,” he said as kindly as he could. 

“Does that mean you’ve forgiven him? After everything he’s done? He hasn’t changed; you heard what he—”

“That means I haven’t made up my mind yet,” Charles said firmly, ending that line of conversation. “Now, could you kindly pass me that gauze, and see if there’s any ibuprofen in there?”

For the first time, Hank seemed to notice Charles’s one bandaged hand. He pursed his lips. “You’ve been working too hard. You need to give your mind _and_ your hands some time to rest.”

“Yes, there are some areas in which I’m rather incorrigible,” Charles replied with a fond smile, as Hank settled down into Erik’s abandoned chair and took his other hand. Though Charles did not care to be fussed over, he could feel the thread of hurt running through Hank’s thoughts that Charles hadn’t come to him; however, Hank, the dear man, did not speak so much as a word of recrimination as he finished patching Charles up. The least he could do in the face of such generosity was let him lecture a bit. 

“You’ve been spending hours in Cerebro, Professor. We haven’t done any studies into the long-term impact of prolonged use, and I’d rather not risk your brain on the assumption that there won’t be any ill-effects.”

“You used to want to shave my head to make it easier to connect me to the machine.” 

“Well, that was just...foolish enthusiasm. I was young,” Hank shot back, pushing his glasses back up defensively. Knowing it would only hurt his feelings, Charles was careful not to smile at the implication that Hank wasn’t still young. 

“If you’re...” Hank paused, and Charles could feel him weigh whether or not to continue. That Hank was thinking of Erik was painfully obvious, however; Charles sighed and inclined his head slightly. _Go on._

“It’s just that you don’t need to spend every day in there, if you’re trying to avoid Erik,” Hank said, emboldened. “He barely spends any time inside. That’s why I was so surprised to see him.”

That was news, and potentially concerning. “Oh?” he inquired, keeping his voice casual. Surely if Hank had observed anything worrisome he would have told him. 

“I thought you knew,” Hank said, and he looked worried. Oh dear, that really was not good for Charles’s peace of mind. “He’s been at it for days, and was trying to argue me into letting him miss a serum dose—which I didn’t!” he added quickly, in response to the look on Charles’s face. “Even if the tools are pretty rusty, I wasn’t about to trust him with his powers.”

“Hank,” Charles interrupted, keeping a tight hold of his patience. “I think you had better start at the beginning.”

*

No matter how preternaturally honest Hank was, Charles still found the story impossible to believe until he saw the evidence for himself.

After the school had closed, Charles had let go the grounds- and house-keeping staff whose families had maintained the Westchester estate for generations. He had done so with effusive thanks and obscenely large bonuses: even in the depths of his self-absorbed depression, he hadn’t wanted them to be left wanting, he just wished to be as isolated as possible from their thoughts and pity. As the house had slowly filled with dust and empty bottles in their absence, so had the grounds slowly deteriorated, the plants overflowing their neat borders and beds and further shrouding the house from the public view. 

Now the front gardens were completely transformed. Even seeing them with his own eyes, even recalling Erik’s repair of their front gate, it took a moment for Charles to get his head around it. It just seemed so...incongruous. 

“He does realize I’m not re-opening the school, doesn’t he?” he asked, taking in the way the bushes and trees had been trimmed back, the bare patches of dirt where weeds had been pulled from the circle in the centre of the driveway. The X-pattern in the bushes was visible there once again. They were sparse yet, but would surely fill in again now that they were no longer being choked. He could see Erik in the flawless attention to detail—everything neat, precise, and in its place. 

“I told him that,” Hank said unhappily from his place at Charles’s shoulder. “He, um, replied in German. I don’t think it was complimentary.”

“No, I don’t imagine that it was.” 

Carefully negotiating the low step down onto the driveway, Charles wheeled himself out onto the driveway, which was clear of weeds and fallen leaves for the first time he could remember in years. Hank called his name, but Charles raised one hand to request he wait. A suspicion was starting to form, and he wanted to confirm it. 

The grounds were a visible sign of neglect that might deter parents of prospective students, but there were other, smaller things on this side of the mansion that he had noticed over the years without having the will to fix them, things that might be overlooked by a casual observer: a shutter slightly askew here, ivy growing thickly across a window there. Minor irritations only a resident of a house might be bothered by. His heart was lodged firmly in his throat as he turned back to look.

They were all fixed. Blurred though his vision was, Charles could tell that much. Of course they were all fixed, and there were probably a half-dozen other small repairs to things Charles had never noticed were broken. Oh, Erik. He dragged one hand across his eyes and blinked hard, but managed a smile as Hank strode across the driveway toward him. Poor Hank’s mind was a jumble of concern and confusion—understandably, since as far as he could see, Charles was sitting in the middle of his driveway and weeping over a fixed shutter.

“I’m sorry Hank, don’t mind me,” he started as Hank reached him. Behind his glasses, Hank’s eyes were wide with concern. He crouched down on the driveway and fished a handkerchief out of his pocket to offer Charles. “I’m just being silly.”

“I can tell him to stop, Professor,” Hank promised. “It isn’t his house; he can’t just do whatever he wants with it.”

“No,” Charles shook his head. “No, Hank, that won’t be necessary. I promised all of you a long time ago that this could be your home, and I meant it.” How to explain to Hank that his emotional outburst was in fact over the very tangible difference between a _house_ and a _home_ , and at which term Erik had chosen to take to heart?

 _He forfeited that right when he shot you in the back._

Hank’s thought was loud and clear across Charles’s mind, barely held back. But he did hold it back, and Charles opted to honour that restraint by pretending not to have heard the thought. He wiped his eyes with the handkerchief and gave Hank a watery smile. “Perhaps we should go inside and have some tea. It’s been a while since we’ve caught up.”

As Hank pushed him back toward the house, Charles made a mental note to spend some more time outside the next time Hank was busy in his laboratory, to see what else Erik had already repaired. Hank was saying something, but all Charles could think of was the blisters on Erik’s palm, the splinter embedded in his skin, the fight that had ensued. Some things were easier to fix than others.

“And can you order us some new gardening tools please, Hank? The old ones are probably past repair.”

*

It had been a while since they’d spoken—years, really, though Hank suspected Professor Xavier didn’t see it the same way. Charles probably thought he’d fooled Hank with polite smiles and empty pleasantries pasted over his unkempt clothes and puffy eyes, but the Professor Hank had known had vanished the day the school had closed. Maybe that was the problem with having been a telepath since he was a kid—the Professor had never really learned to lie without his powers. When Hank had finally perfected the serum, he’d hoped it might help cheer him up, bring him back to the man who had frequently lingered in Hank’s laboratory, had taught him to accept his mutation, and had been genuinely interested in each of Hank’s experiments.

Instead, that conversation had really been the last they’d had, and even then the Professor had been...unfailingly polite, but barely present. 

He had missed his friend. 

The invitation to tea was rare; to have it in Charles’s library even more so. Traditionally over the last ten years, this had been the room where Charles had frequently gone to drink alone. Even now, mug of tea cupped in his hands and looking more _there_ than Hank had seen him in a while, Charles was distracted. He didn’t even make the kinds of insightful but absent-minded comments Hank had become used to, even when the subject was the molecular composition of Magneto’s helmet and his hypotheses on how it might impact Charles’s telepathy. Instead, his eyes kept drifting toward the windows over the terrace, and his primary contribution to the conversation was an occasional, inquisitive, “hmmm?”

Eventually, Hank trailed off into silence, tapping his fingers against the warm ceramic of his mug. It took a few minutes, but eventually Charles seemed to notice the silence and that he was being observed. He jumped a bit, guilty, then flushed. 

“My apologies, Hank; I’m afraid I wandered off there,” he said with a small smile. “Please, do continue.”

He did, but the Professor’s attention quickly wandered away again. There was a speculative look on his face that Hank didn’t like, not when his eyes were still red-rimmed and Hank could still smell the sharp tang of anger and adrenaline from their argument in the kitchen earlier. He could feel it making his fur bristle, even under his skin. He had never trusted Erik, even before he’d shot the Professor and betrayed all of them. Though as a scientist Hank prided himself on being able to look at things objectively and dispassionately, he still didn’t like the way Erik looked at people, at Hank’s friends. There was something so...cold, so calculating about Erik, like he was only interested in people so far as they were useful to him. The way he’d abandoned the Professor the moment he’d achieved what he wanted with Shaw only proved it. 

Given their history, the wistful look on Charles’s face as he looked toward the window again made Hank uneasy. Everything about Charles and Erik made him uneasy. It wasn’t just anger that heated Charles’s scent when he thought of Erik. When they had all been living together in the house before everything had gone to hell, they had tried to be discreet but had not been very successful, as far as Hank was concerned. It was a big house, so big that it was noticeable how much time they spent together; not so big that it wasn’t obvious how many increasingly flimsy excuses Charles had when caught walking down the hall to Erik’s bedroom at night. 

Hank was not so sheltered that he wasn’t aware that...that men like that existed, though he wouldn’t have pegged either Erik or the Professor as a homosexual. From the stories Raven had gleefully told him about Charles at Oxford, it sounded like the Professor hadn’t been until he’d met Erik. How Erik had come to have that much sway over the Professor, Hank didn’t know. He would have thought Charles would be able to see past the veneer of persuasiveness to the ruthless man underneath. 

(There had been a small part of Hank, a shameful part, that could not understand why a telepath of Charles’s abilities wouldn’t use his power to _fix_ whatever it was that was miscalibrated in his and Erik’s minds and just be...normal. He was trying to be better about that, not to dwell on how unnatural it seemed to be: Hank was a scientist, and if the American Psychiatric Association no longer considered homosexuality a diagnosable mental illness, he would do his due diligence and subject his own negative attitudes towards it to rigorous scientific analysis. 

If Charles had ever read the shameful, disapproving thoughts in Hank’s head, he had kindly never said anything about them. It had made it harder, though, after Cuba, when the Professor was sinking. Charles didn’t want to talk about Erik, and couldn’t confide in Hank without confessing to a crime; Hank couldn’t confess that he already knew without having to face up to his own distaste. Nor could he support Charles properly when neither of them could admit aloud that Charles’s heart was broken. Hank had chosen to let him withdraw, instead. He had been trying to make up for it ever since.)

“I am sorry, Hank. I’m afraid I’m not much of a conversational partner today, am I?” Charles said ruefully, bringing Hank back to the present moment as well. He was smiling, but he looked too pale, and the skin at his temples was reddened from where he’d been wearing the Cerebro helmet for too long. However, for the first time in ages there was the hint of the man Hank used to know in his face; he felt guilty that he wasn’t happier to see it, because he knew it was Erik’s doing. 

“I don’t trust him,” Hank blurted out. 

Immediately, Charles’s expression smoothed over into something politely distant, and his smile no longer reached his eyes. “I don’t believe you ever did, Hank.” 

Self-conscious at his own outburst, Hank pulled his glasses off and polished them on the hem of his shirt. “Well, in a way that’s exactly my point, Professor. I don’t have to trust him. Or like him much, either. That’s not how...how this kind of thing works, is it?” his tongue felt clumsy and he knew his cheeks were flaming red as he tiptoed (stumbled, more accurately) around what he still didn’t feel comfortable saying directly. He hoped the Professor knew what he was getting at, regardless. 

Charles was silent. When Hank finally replaced his glasses and dared look at him, the Professor’s lips were parted slightly, and his cheeks had gone pink. He hadn’t thought it was possible to catch a telepath off-guard. 

After a moment, Charles blinked hard and looked away. “Yes, well, he...That is to say, I....” he cleared his throat. “Thank you, Hank. You’ll, ah, let me know how the rest of your experiments go? Good man.”

Hank left him to his thoughts and took their mugs back down to the kitchen. Washing them at the sink, he glanced up when movement caught his eye, and saw through the kitchen window Erik walking around to the back gardens. He nodded once, and even did his best to attempt a smile when Erik caught his eye. The look of consternation he received in return was almost worth the tentative truce.

*

After Hank left, Charles finally gave in to temptation and wheeled himself over to the library window. No sign of Erik from this angle, but Charles had already seen all the work he’d done out front; perhaps he was finished there. Feeling rather like a teenager sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night, Charles left the library in search of a better vantage point. Massive as it house and the grounds were, it took exploring a few rooms (and an increasing sense of embarrassment) before he caught a glimpse of Erik. Grateful that he couldn’t sense Hank anywhere nearby, and that this time Erik wouldn’t be able to use his powers to sense he was being spied on, he parked himself by the window and watched.

The sun was shining from a cloudless sky, and the afternoon had grown warm. Erik had taken off his button-down at some point, and was only in his undershirt as he attacked the overgrown hedges like they had personally offended him. The hedge clippers were obviously rusty and resisting each movement, judging from the shift and flex of the muscles in Erik’s arms and back. 

Charles’s face felt hot, his breathing gone shallow. Even acknowledging all the bloody history between them and Erik’s many years spent in prison, it was still impossible to deny he was an uncommonly beautiful man. And here Charles was mooning over him like a teenage girl over the Beatles, watching and wanting from afar—Christ, even Hank had noticed his attraction to Erik. Well, and why not? He was paralyzed and, from snatches of Hank’s thoughts that he never voiced aloud, it was quite likely that he was also depressed, but Charles wasn’t _dead_. He bit his lower lip and let his eyes trail down the line of Erik’s back, admiring the broad expanse of his shoulders and his narrow waist. The thin fabric of his undershirt was plastered to his torso from his exertions, and Charles could vividly picture peeling it off him, could almost feel how hot his skin would be under Charles’s hands, his mouth. 

He undid a few buttons of his shirt to cool down, aware that the flush of arousal was extending down his chest. But he hesitated after that, fingers skimming the front of his trousers. He wanted the release, pale imitation of its former self though it might be. There was no harm in fantasizing, surely, even with the subject of his fantasies under his roof—there was little chance he’d ever get close enough to Erik again for anything better than this furtive self-abuse in an abandoned bedroom. 

No, better to be completely honest with himself: even if Charles wanted to invite Erik into his bed, it was unlikely he would accept. When they’d travelled together, Charles had always been aware of the cloud of lustful thoughts that followed them, focussed almost exclusively on Erik. Though he’d been all but invisible even before his injury, it hadn’t mattered when Erik’s mind would light up whenever he looked at Charles. It was different now.

He swallowed hard, but couldn’t rid himself of the bitter taste in his mouth. What was he doing? Actually considering masturbating over a former lover who had broken his heart quite thoroughly? 

Properly ashamed of himself, Charles quickly buttoned his shirt up again and left the room, grateful that Hank was back downstairs and not around to witness his mortification. Good Lord, but he needed a drink. 

Once back in the library, Charles pulled all the curtains closed so as not to lead himself into temptation if Erik came back around to the front of the house. Miracle of miracles, there was still a full bottle of wine in the liquor cabinet. It wasn’t precisely what he wanted—whiskey or scotch, neat, until the burn of humiliation and desire was drowned out had been the basic plan—but it would serve. Hank would be very disappointed if he caught him at it, Charles knew, but he defiantly left the door open as he poured his first glass. 

Erik’s words from earlier in the afternoon echoed in his mind as he drank, despite Charles’s attempts to drown him out. 

_If Raven had shot the president, would you still welcome her home?_

_Perhaps when Havok comes back, you can tell him that he’s irredeemable too._

_Everyone is capable of killing._

Charles didn’t want to believe that. Even in the depths of his own anger and despair, the idea of taking a life had never even crossed his mind. He’d grown up with so much power, with the knowledge that he could stop a heart with nothing more than a thought, and had ruthlessly trained himself to guard every thought and fit of pique, to make sure he was safe to those around him. Erik was wrong: there were always other ways, and choosing to kill had to alter a person fundamentally. Wasn’t that why Logan had come back from the future? To prevent a murder that would lead Raven—lead all of them—down a dark and destructive path? Maybe it was foolish of him to want to save her when she was more than capable of saving herself, but he couldn’t regret trying to show her a better way. 

He rubbed the bridge of his nose, then poured himself more wine. It hadn’t been a fair question, to ask if he’d welcome Raven home. If she was able to kill so casually, she would no longer be the Raven he loved, would she.

Would she?

Charles swirled his wine pensively around his glass and bit his lower lip. That Raven might have killed someone before they’d reunited had not previously occurred to him—he’d taken Logan and, by extension, his future self, at his word that she hadn’t. But it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility, given how many months she’d spent with Erik and Shaw’s former Brotherhood. If she had, he couldn’t imagine that he’d tell him of all people. What if his moralizing speech about how good and kind she was had done more to alienate her than to let her know she was still loved?

Hastily setting aside the glass, and fortunately managing not to spill it on anything important, Charles pressed his fingers against his temple and reached out. It was difficult without Cerebro—perhaps Hank was right and he’d been using it too much, if he were coming to depend on it—but he tried to cast his mind outward, seeking the familiar shape of Raven’s thoughts. 

For a moment, he thought he felt a familiar presence brush against his mind, but it was too faint and far away to be sure. _I love you,_ he projected regardless, hoping that she would hear him even if he couldn’t hear her response. _And I miss you. Please come home. You’re always welcome home._

He waited, but there was nothing but silence in response. Charles sighed and dropped his hand back into his lap. 

When he opened his eyes, Erik was standing in the doorway. He’d clearly just come in from outside—he was holding his discarded shirt in one hand, and the skin on his shoulders and cheekbones was pinked from the sun. There was an odd expression on his face. 

“Were you talking to anyone in particular?” he asked, gesturing toward his temple. 

Charles felt himself colour, suddenly certain Erik had heard him. And if he’d heard that somehow, had he heard Charles’s thoughts about him earlier? He looked sidelong at the wine glass on his desk. Or there was a decided possibility he’d been projecting a bit more broadly than he’d meant to. 

“Raven was with you and the others for months,” he said abruptly, ignoring the question. “Did she...if we hadn’t stopped her in Paris, would Trask have been the first...?”

“She didn’t kill anyone, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Charles’s relief must have been evident on his face, because Erik’s expression tightened and he turned away without another word. Charles listened to his footsteps fade down the hallway, pause, and then Erik came storming back into the library, closing the door firmly behind him. 

“Why does it matter?” he demanded. 

“You’re asking why it matters to me whether or not my sister is a murderer?”

Erik swore and stalked over to Charles to grab the bottle of wine from next to his chair. He smelled like clean sweat and grass and sunlight, a sucker-punch to Charles’s libido.

Erik took an uncharacteristic drink straight from the bottle and threw himself down into his old chair. “Perhaps this hasn’t occurred to you, Charles, but Raven would still be your sister if she had killed someone. It isn’t as though she’d be snatched away and replaced with a _Wechselbalg_ the moment she pulled the trigger.”

“Yes, well, it’s rather self-serving of you to have that outlook, isn’t it,” Charles replied, “given that you’ve killed rather a lot of people.” He resisted the urge to pour himself another glass: it was barely gone three in the afternoon, and he did have some restraint.

“I have,” Erik’s voice was even. “The first time I killed someone I was fifteen—the Nazi soldiers who held my mother while Shaw murdered her. Do they count, or do you only hold such sins against adults? Or only people you don’t like?” His voice dropped, and he narrowed his eyes. “Maybe you don’t want to be friends with murderers, but are fine with one sucking your cock.”

“Don’t use our history against me, Erik, not like that.” Charles said quietly. “That isn’t fair. You know I’m not so callous as not to draw a distinction between reacting in self-defense and actively choosing to kill.”

“No, it isn’t fair,” Erik agreed. “You’ll twist yourself into knots to give the benefit of the doubt to humans, but you won’t extend the same consideration to your own people.” He shook his head. “I told you what I was from the moment we met, Charles; I told you I was going to kill Shaw. I’ve never lied to you. You simply chose not to listen.”

“I trusted you, but we were never anything more than means to an end, whatever the cost.” His words had been so at odd with his thoughts, his expressed desire for vengeance warring with a growing need for a home. Erik was happy at Westchester; Charles had been so sure it. It had been a very convincing lie, to fool a telepath. That was the heart of it: they had gone so quickly from being strangers at odds with each other to Erik bemusedly welcoming Charles into his thoughts and his bed. It was a level of intimacy that Charles extended no more easily than Erik did...and Erik had thrown it back in his face contemptuously once Shaw was dead. 

With a snarl, Erik stood, slamming the bottle down on the chessboard hard enough to make the pieces rattle. Startled, Charles twitched his hand toward his temple. 

Erik’s lips thinned at the movement. “You’ve never trusted me, Charles,” he snapped, gesturing contemptuously at Charles’s defensive posture. “You may have trusted Raven once, you certainly always trusted your human handler, but you’ve always ascribed the worst possible motivations to me. I had to have shot the president, despite no evidence; returning fire against the Russians and Americans was egomaniacal aggression, rather than a justified response to their unprovoked attack; I was only ever using you, instead of being your friend. Don’t accuse me of lying when all of us were only convenient leverage for you to ingratiate yourself with the CIA.” 

“You shot me in the back and left me to _die_! Forgive me if I don’t interpret that as the actions of a friend,” Charles’s voice rose to match Erik’s, accusation for accusation. There was a perverse part of him that wanted to see Erik flinch, to hurt him as much as he himself had been hurt. They had danced around the subject of Cuba on the plane, but Charles would not be cowed by Erik’s fury this time, nor would he let Erik attempt to sweep everything away with an apology, unexpectedly direct though it had been. 

But instead of flinching away from the subject, Erik bared his teeth in a mirthless smile. “Tell me, Charles, do you blame Moira for firing the bullet, or just me for deflecting it? She was trying to kill me, and her compatriots tried to kill us both. But still you gave the humans what they wanted, mutant fighting mutant, when we were stronger together—”

“You left!” Charles yelled over him. “Don’t you _dare_ preach to me about us being _stronger together_ , Erik, not when you destroyed everything we’d stood for and left me to pick up the pieces.”

“I begged you to come with me, Charles. Did you ask me to stay?”

Oh, that was unfair. The bitterness of it choked Charles into silence, and he had to turn his chair away to compose himself. He had been left bleeding out on the sand, reeling from shock and pain, the echoes of Shaw’s death still ringing in his head and the unexpected betrayal of the man on whom he’d hung so many hopes. He remembered Erik’s face above his, partially hidden by that fucking helmet that shrouded his mind from Charles’s touch. 

God, but he’d felt so alone.

Erik hadn’t trusted Charles with the culmination of his revenge. Why would he possibly have trusted Charles with their shared future?

“I don’t believe for a moment it would have mattered,” he said, and wheeled himself toward the door: he would not stoop to asking Erik the favour of leaving him alone to his thoughts. “You’re so determined to take your pound of flesh for every slight—real or perceived—that nothing I could have said then or now would make a difference. One wonders where you’ll go once you’ve burned the world to ashes.”

“You think so little of me, Charles; I do my best to live down to expectations.”

Maybe Erik was as worn down by going over and over this argument as Charles was, because his voice was flat, colourless with exhaustion. It made Charles pause in the doorway to look back at him. 

Erik had crossed to the chessboard and was staring down at it, framed by the warm afternoon sunlight through the windows. This time, Charles couldn’t just admire the play of light on the line of his jaw, the muscles of his arms—he saw instead the ruthless way Erik had carried on Shaw’s work of forming himself into a weapon. He was pared down, nothing spare or indulgent to him. _Frankenstein’s monster_ , Erik had called himself once: a thing that shouldn’t exist, self-taught and met with cruelty throughout the world. 

He’d called Erik a monster himself, too, barely two months ago to Logan. But in that moment, looking at the downcast tilt of Erik’s head, Charles felt...not sympathy, not exactly. No, he pitied Erik: the man defined himself so completely by his abilities and fueled them with his anger, as though he feared there was nothing more to himself than that. He had completed Shaw’s work of stripping away any sense of selfhood beyond that of _mutant_. And Charles had taken even that away from him; no wonder Erik hated him so much. 

_“But now, that virtue has become to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy?”_

Rubbing at his eyes, Charles shook his head, “Oh no, my friend, I know you’re far better than you fear yourself to be. I’m not sure you’re a monster, Erik, but you do monstrous things. That’s why I’m so disappointed.” 

With that, he left Erik alone and retreated to his own bedroom, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. 

_Just because someone stumbles and loses their way, it doesn’t mean they’re lost forever. Sometimes we need a little help,_ his older self had said. He had to be far wiser than Charles was now, because he didn’t understand how to _help_ someone who apparently had no desire to be helped, nor to change his outlook. Was it mere stumbling if someone killed repeatedly and without remorse? 

He remembered what it had felt like, being in Shaw’s mind and holding him still as he died. He’d felt every moment of pain and fear, had felt his body shutting down around him, had felt the absolute horror of looking death in the face. That was what Erik did every time he took a life; what he expected Charles to take lightly and forgive easily.

Erik had first killed when he was fifteen years old. Perhaps there had never been a chance for them at all. Perhaps they had simply met each other too late. 

Charles rested his head against the back of his chair and rubbed his hands over his face. _If you’re out there, Raven, please do come home. I need more than a little help._

*

_Shaw’s voice is in his ear. The words are in German, and he can’t quite grasp at their meaning; the tone, however, leaves him utterly cold. It’s warm and paternal, almost jovial. Even without looking at Shaw—no, not here: here he’s Schmidt,_ Herr Doktor _—he knows that he’s excited about something, and oh God he doesn’t want to look._

_Against his own volition, he turns his head away from the fustily comfortable office, with its solid desk and full bookcases—_

_—and sees the white room behind glass. It’s stark and bright, highlighting the tools that line the walls, and he tries to flinch back. He knows what’s in that room, the red wash of pain and the bright cold of metal. With Schmidt guiding him, he’s pulled closer to the room, through the glass, tugged along by the pleasant, horrifying voice._

_Inside, he sees that the room expands far beyond the dimensions of the building. It’s full of tables now, row upon row of stark, surgical steel. They’re all occupied. All the occupants are dead._

__Case No. 609463 _a file hanging from the first table reads. Feeling like his hands are no longer under his control, he picks it up. Still talking genially, Herr Schmidt unzips the body bag._

_Her face hasn’t been touched. He wonders if that is or isn’t a mercy. Angel’s face looks peaceful, at odds with the gruesome Y-incision in her chest, the clear absence of one wing. (For a moment he sees the room in the Pentagon, a circular strip of brightly-lit glass behind which trophies taken from dead mutants are mounted proudly)._

_The pictures in the file show the process of the dissection, each stage of the wing removal carefully documented, with ample notations in the margins on the differences in musculature between the subject, a human, and a bird, alongside speculations on the weight-bearing capacity and aerodynamics of her wings._

_He doesn’t want to see any more, but finds himself drawn down the line of tables. Though he can’t see them, he knows that Schmidt has been joined by Trask, the two of them speaking incongruously in German together._

_Emma._

_Azazel._

_Sean Cassidy._

_Their files list case numbers first, their names almost an afterthought, but Charles recognizes them. He isn’t allowed to linger, however, tugged inexorably along to witness the dead and mutilated bodies of mutants he never met, never even knew existed, proudly displayed to him. A cross-section of gills. The careful removal of spines. Segments of skin peeled back and bodies opened up to spill their secrets._

_He already feels sick by the time they reach the smallest body-bag in the room._

_The girl has no visible mutation, and couldn’t have been more than three or four. Incongruously with the rest of the room, she’s been laid out almost reverently, hair neatly brushed back and wearing a clean, if worn, dress. The room flickers in his awareness, darkening around him and the dead little girl, and his vision blurs with tears at the sudden and desperate sensation of_ loss _that hits him._

 _Now Schmidt is in front of him again, smiling down at him kindly. The man hands him a scalpel and gestures to the girl in invitation._ “Sieh doch selbst wie du sie umgebracht hast, Erik. Wie kann ein schwacher Mensch von einer Kreatur ohne Herz gezeugt worden zu sein, überleben?” __

_He starts to move forward, raising the blade. But before he can bring it down he wrenches himself away, fighting the narrative of the dream. The scalpel clatters to the floor and he stumbles, panting, into the final table._

_This body bag is already open, the dissection fresh._

_The body is his own._

__

*

Charles woke with panic crushing his lungs, and he curled over onto his side, gasping, trying desperately to breathe. His temples throbbed with the psychic resonance of grief and horror, and his stomach twisted so hard he was certain he was going to be sick.

Oh God. _Erik_. 

He managed to scramble out of bed and into his chair before he was entirely awake, before he remembered their vicious argument from that afternoon. He hesitated, knowing his intrusion would not be welcomed. But no; whatever Erik’s reaction, however angry he might be, Charles would not—could not—leave him to his nightmare. Not this time. 

Erik didn’t answer Charles’s knock on the door and, to his surprise, when he pushed it open, the room beyond was empty. The bed was still neatly made, everything precisely the way Erik had left it the day they had left for Cuba, as if he had never returned at all. Though his head still throbbed abominably and the room itself had the feeling of being untouched, Charles could still sense him. “Erik?” he called, wheeling himself further into the room. “Erik, are you all right?”

No answer, but as he tried to reconcile he discrepancy between what his mind and what his eyes were telling him, he caught sight of Erik through the balcony doors. Of course. Charles felt a twinge of shame for not realizing it earlier: Erik would no more want to sleep inside at the moment than he would ever eat chocolate or listen to Édith Piaf. His heart clenched painfully in his chest as he moved to investigate.

Erik had managed to scrounge up a sleeping bag from somewhere in the house to set up a makeshift bed on the balcony. Though still soundly asleep, his body was as taut as a piano wire, his expression set in a grimace. Awkwardly, Charles managed to wrestle the heavy door open and maneuver himself out onto the balcony, his heart aching in sympathy with every slight twitch of Erik’s hands. His ragged breathing was very loud in the still night. The stillness was worse than if he’d been thrashing around, his movements tight and restrained as though he were caught in a trap. Erik had always slept lightly; that he hadn’t woken the moment Charles had opened the door was as frightening as the contents of his dream.

“Erik,” he said again aloud, then, _Erik! Wake up. Listen to me: this is just a dream. You can wake up._ into his head when the sound of his voice garnered no response.

He felt the dream shatter as Erik’s eyes flew open. For a breathless second he held Charles’s gaze, startled and exposed. Then his expression crumpled, and he quickly turned his face away. 

Charles blinked hard, his eyes wet in sympathy, but he respected the privacy of Erik’s grief by pretending not to have seen that moment of naked pain. “I think both whiskey and a game of chess are in order,” he said as evenly as possible. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

He took longer about fetching the chess board from his room—smaller and less ornate than their favourite board in the library, but also more portable—and a bottle and glasses than was strictly necessary, but the delay had the desired impact. By the time he returned to Erik’s room, he was sitting up in his cobbled-together bed, and his eyes were dry. 

There was a small table and two armchairs by the windows tucked into a corner of the room, and Charles set the board up there, glancing over at Erik outside. “If you’d like to move this over to the door you can sit outside. It’s a bit too chilly for me to stay out long, I’m afraid.”

He could feel his parting words from the afternoon hanging heavily between them, casting long shadows over his empty chatter, but he persevered. Avoiding that argument wouldn’t fix anything in the long term, but Charles was not so hard-hearted as to want to push for a difficult conversation on the heels of a nightmare about dead friends and children. It would keep, and superficial conversations were hardly strangers to them. “Please,” he added, when Erik just stared at him blankly. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen that sleeping bag before in my life,” he continued, as Erik stood stiffly and came inside to drag the table and one of the chairs over. He didn’t move it entirely outside, but set his chair by the open door to still be able to feel the cool evening air. “Where on earth did you find it?”

A measuring look, like Erik was establishing whether or not Charles meant the question in earnest, then, curtly, “The attic.” 

“Ah,” Charles tried to keep his smile in the face of Erik’s reticence, pouring them both a measure of whiskey as Erik set up the chess board. He hadn’t kicked Charles out of his room yet, which was progress of a sort. “I haven’t been up there in quite some time.”

He’d meant the comment generally—he hadn’t explored the attic since he’d packed away everything he wasn’t taking with him to Oxford—but Erik’s expression tightened, and he set down the remaining chess pieces with more force than was necessary. Clearly, avoiding the hard conversation would take effort. 

Erik had set up the board so that Charles was playing White. Though it was their standing arrangement, Charles couldn’t help but wonder if Erik did so tonight because of how he viewed their relative positions, or if he preferred to position himself to play and try to win from a disadvantaged starting point . It afforded Charles the first move, at least, which he took after unwinding the clumsy bandages from around his palms instead of voicing any of the unsaid words between them: pawn to E4. He and Erik had bickered frequently about the merits of Adams’s admittedly contested claim of “White’s strongest move”—Erik, preferring to play Black, was instead a strong proponent of Horowitz’s strategies—so it seemed only right to start with his preferred opening move. Erik countered: E5, as expected. 

Some of the tightness in Charles’s chest eased, and when he glanced up at Erik, he was almost smiling. Erik still looked serious, though, frowning at Charles instead of the board. 

“About this afternoon, Charles,” he started, but Charles shook his head firmly. Not tonight. Let it wait for the morning. He had met Erik at night, and their happiest hours and some of their best conversations had, by necessity, been shrouded in darkness. Daylight, for them, had always been reality and unhappy endings. 

“Did you hear that Horowitz passed away earlier this year?” he asked, moving his next piece: Nf3 . “It might not have made the headlines of the papers you were reading.”

Erik gave him a long, measured look, then sighed and turned his attention back to the chessboard. They exchanged moves in rapid succession, the click of pieces against the board familiar though everything else had changed. 

“You told Hank you wouldn’t leave until I told you to,” Charles finally ventured, fortified by his drink and the familiar rhythm of the game. “Why did you aban— _leave_ ,” he hastily corrected at the way Erik glanced up at him, eyes hard, “all of us in Cuba, then?”

“I already told you.”

“Tell me again, Erik,” Charles insisted. Cd4. Ed4. Bg5. “Because I find it hard to believe that, after everything you did that day, my extending a cordial invitation back to Westchester would have made any damned difference.”

“I came with you when you were a stranger in Florida, and stayed when you asked me to at the CIA,” Erik said. “But when I said I wanted you by my side, you...said we wanted different things. I took you at your word.” He considered the board for a moment, then moved his bishop to e6.

Stunned, Charles stared at him in silence. That hadn’t been what he’d meant at all. “We did want different things: Erik, you’d just tried to bomb _thousands_ of people. I wanted to at least make an attempt at peace.”

“Does it make a difference?” Erik leaned back in his chair, watching him. His expression was carefully neutral, and Charles stayed out of his mind. If ever a resolution were going to be possible between them—and he wasn’t convinced it was—they would have to attempt to reestablish trust. “I know I’m not the man you want me to be—I never was, whatever you might think; I didn’t suddenly change in Cuba. I’ve always been too....” he shook his head sharply and leaned forward again to set his glass down next to the board. Hastily, Charles moved one of his pieces, not caring for strategy now. 

“You can think I’m a murderer, Charles; I don’t disagree. I’ve seen too many times the depths to which humans can sink not to respond in kind.” He traced one finger along the side of his queen, expression intent. “But I’ve never killed someone who didn’t first attack me or mine.”

Queen to b6. Charles stared at Erik instead of the board. 

“You fired into a crowd of innocent people, Erik, only days after you swore to me you wouldn’t kill anyone.”

“So they would run,” Erik replied, exasperated. He rubbed one hand over his face, then dropped his hand back to the arm of his chair. His voice hardened. “If I’d wanted them dead, Charles, the lawn would have been covered in bodies. I wasn’t leashed by your drugs then.”

The casual way Erik spoke of killing made Charles queasy, and he had to bite down on an accusatory response. Yelling hadn’t helped either of them so far, not when there was so much space and jagged edges between them. He took a deep breath and temporized, studying the board and picking up his rook. There had been so much fear and panic that afternoon, and Charles had been so afraid, so _angry_...but he knew, on reflection, that Erik was telling the truth: None of the terrified minds that had overwhelmed his senses had been extinguished by a bullet. Nor had Hank seen any death tolls reported in the papers—Charles would have heard about it if he had. It was small, but it was something: Erik had, at least, not broken that particular promise to Charles. 

“And the president and his men?” He set his rook down and moved his bishop instead as he spoke. “Was that just a display for the cameras as well, or would you really have killed them?”

Erik hesitated, and Charles didn’t need to read his mind to know that he was considering lying to him. 

“No, that wasn’t an empty threat,” he finally said. He phrased it gently, but the truth still pushed the breath from Charles’s lungs. “I was prepared to do what needed to be done to protect us, Charles. I imagined you’d be the one to stop me rather than Raven once I saw you there, but if neither of you had....” he trailed off. 

“You planned on being stopped?” he asked, managing to force out the words past the tightness of his throat. The claim rather stretched credulity. 

Erik shrugged. “Raven was so pleased to see you that I had little doubt you’d work your way back into her head. You always did try to be Jiminy Cricket.” He smiled thinly, but Charles couldn’t return the expression. “Either one of you stopped me and the world saw mutants as heroes instead of just villains, or I eliminated a threat and the world learned to be very, very cautious about provoking us. Either way, we wouldn’t have to hide any longer.”

“Erik...” Charles shook his head. There it was again, the deep chasm between their ideologies. Charles wasn’t comforted by the fact that Erik seemed to have as little idea how to bridge it as he did. “There were other ways, _better_ ways. It might have taken more time, but—”

“Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,” Erik muttered, and moved his rook .

“Yes, because threatening to slaughter people on a massive scale is the only way to achieve mutant equality, while patience and reasoning are cowardly.” Charles retorted. “Pardon me if I prefer the latter approach: ‘If we can make our peace / upon such large terms and so absolute / as our conditions shall consist upon / our peace shall stand as firm as rocky mountains.’” He slammed his knight down on the board. 

Erik’s lips twitched ever so slightly. “Hastings was a traitor, as I recall.”

“And Hamlet was a whiny child whose bloody stupid quest for vengeance got his friends and beloved killed,” Charles snapped. “His monologue is hardly the defense you seem to think it is.”

The amusement slipped from Erik’s face. “And on the subject of ill-chosen quotations Charles, shall we discuss ‘just following orders’? Did you imagine that citing _Adolf Eichman_ to me would be especially persuasive?”

There was genuine anger in his voice, and Charles felt his heart drop. It hadn’t been deliberate—he’d followed the trial only sporadically, absorbed as he had been in his dissertation, but he vividly remembered how appalled he had been at that excuse. The banality of evil indeed, to reduce the murder of so many to a question of professional conduct.

“Erik, I’m sorry,” he said, reaching across the table to touch his hand. “I wasn’t thinking when I said that. I just wanted...I hoped we could find a different path.”

Erik inhaled sharply at the touch, but he didn’t pull away. “It’s very easy for you to be an idealist, Charles—you’ve had a charmed life. You might have the privilege of imagining a better, peaceful word, but I’ve had to deal with the world as it really is. I won’t apologize for that.”

Charles nodded and slowly withdrew his hand. Despite what Erik might think his life hadn’t always been easy, but he wouldn’t attempt to argue that; it had been a different kind of difficulty entirely. “How are we meant to change the world for the better if no one is willing to imagine a better world?”

“But imagining isn’t sufficient, Charles,” Erik leaned forward, intensely earnest. “You have so many qualms with the process necessary to achieve your world of so-called mutant-human harmony that it will stay a figment of your imagination. You don’t have the stomach to enact what is necessary to make it reality. I care more about the end goal than groveling to appease humans to achieve it bloodlessly.”

It was tempting to press the point of a common end-goal (or common enough; he had no illusions about Erik’s opinion of “mutant-human harmony”), but Charles instead took a cautious step back from the gulf that still lay between them. Perhaps there was the beginning of a bridge between them now, but it wouldn’t yet bear much weight. 

“Is it every night?” It was a disingenuous question: he already knew that Erik had nightmares every night; he’d dreamt them along with him. Now that he’d seen the impact those dreams had on Erik up close, the lines of pain etched around his eyes and mouth, he felt guilt twist under his ribs that he had stayed away for so long. 

Erik didn’t look up from moving the chess pieces back into their starting positions, but he nodded tersely. The subject of _what_ he had been dreaming clearly was not something he was willing to discuss. Erik had always been tight-lipped about things that caused him pain. 

It was probably for the best—the subject of Angel, Emma, and the rest of Erik’s mutant brotherhood would only start another argument between them. But while their faces were familiar to him, cold and dead and mutilated though they had been, there was was one face that he’d known within Erik’s dream, but that wasn’t recognizable to him outside of it. 

“Erik,” Charles ventured, knowing he was edging out into dangerous territory. “The little girl. Was she—?”

Erik stood instead of replying, picking up the chessboard and carrying it over to the dresser. The unnecessary movement when he was typically nothing if not precise and economical, was as telling as a response would have been. 

Charles looked down at the now-empty table, then leaned over to pick up the bottle of whiskey, pouring each of them another dram. He didn’t drink his, however; his eyes and throat were already burning. “You never told me.” 

It was selfish of him, he knew, to feel hurt by that. He had thought he’d known everything about the recalcitrant Erik Lehnsherr, and had felt proud that he had earned those confidences. 

How arrogant that assumption had been. 

Much as he wanted to wheel over to Erik, Charles held himself back. Soon enough his patience was rewarded. Some of the tension drained from Erik’s posture, and he returned to his chair to pick up the whiskey Charles had poured for him but, like Charles, he didn’t drink it. 

“Anya,” he said simply, but there was an edge to his voice, as though even saying her name was a difficult concession to make. 

Anya. He wondered how old she had been. How old _Erik_ had been. This time, however, Charles heeded the unspoken warning and didn’t push.

Leaning back in his chair, Erik stared into nothing. His free hand lay on the table, but the weight of his loss and their complicated history kept Charles from reaching out to touch it again. In the tense intimacy of the moment, he remembered looking at Erik in the garden that afternoon, and he didn’t dare take that risk of contact, reassurance. 

“You don’t have to stay,” Erik said at last, coming back from wherever his mind had gone. “I promise I won’t drag you out of bed again tonight.”

It was barely three in the morning, so it seemed rather an extravagant promise from a man prone to restless sleep on a good night. Charles raised his eyebrows. “Are you planning to anesthetize yourself with that, then?” he inquired, tilting his head toward Erik’s glass. “It’s an excellent year for it.”

Erik’s lips quirked the smallest bit. “Careful, Charles; you’re sounding rather hypocritical.” 

Granted, Charles’s liver would likely protest the amount of alcohol he had consumed that day, but his own bad habits did not excuse Erik’s. Charles ordinarily would not be above lecturing Erik on that subject, but with his mental shields worn down by exhaustion, he could see the half-formed plans in Erik’s mind, nebulous ideas about retreating to the library with strong coffee and a book until dawn came. Even drinking himself to sleep ran the risk of dreams; Charles knew that from experience. 

“If you’re going to work yourself into exhaustion in the gardens every day, I’m going to have to insist you sleep.”

“Insist?” Erik finally downed the last of his drink, but closed the bottle instead of pouring himself more. There was a challenge in his tone, but Charles could feel that he was intrigued. 

“Mmmm,” Charles agreed, and waggled his fingers next to his temple demonstratively. “If you’ll permit me.”

Erik snorted, incredulous. “You’re actually asking permission?” He rubbed one hand roughly over his face and into his short hair, mussing it, so tired that Charles didn’t take offense at the very weak jab. “What, exactly, would I be permitting?”

“I can...monitor your dreams. Make sure they stay pleasant long enough for you to get through at least one REM Cycle.” Charles smiled. “You’re irritable enough without sleep deprivation on top of it, old friend.” This time, Charles didn’t try to hold back the endearment. 

Erik blinked, clearly thrown, but recovered quickly. “If I’m always irritable around you, Charles, one wonders what that says about your company.” He smiled, all teeth. “I’m sure I’m perfectly pleasant otherwise.”

Startled, Charles laughed, and quickly pressed his hand against his mouth to stifle the sound. It wouldn’t do to wake Hank up in the middle of the night. 

“Will you need to stay? To monitor my sleep,” Erik continued, eyes slipping from Charles’s.

 _No,_ Charles would say if he were honest, if he weren’t selfish. If he could fall into Erik’s dreams from the safety of his own room, he could also keep them on an even keel from there. 

But Charles was selfish, and ever since the afternoon his fingers had been itching for an excuse to touch, to be close. Something that Erik would accept from him, broken as Charles was, and something that Charles could offer without damaging his already ragged pride. 

“For a while, if that’s all right,” the lie came smoothly, easily. “REM Cycles start within 90 to 120 minutes of falling asleep—faster if you haven’t had a complete sleep cycle in a while, which you have not—and last for about as long.” 

Erik nodded stiffly. When he stood, he automatically walked back to the balcony, then glanced over his shoulder when Charles didn’t follow him. Charles inclined his head toward the unslept-in bed instead. Another concession he was asking Erik to make, and this one seemed to trouble him more than agreeing to let Charles stay with him. 

Erik gripped the edge of the balcony door, standing half-outside. His face was shadowed, but Charles could feel the claustrophobic fear that underpinned his reluctance. “Charles....”

“I promise the sky will still be there when you wake up,” Charles said as gently as he could. 

Erik tensed, a full-body flinch that Charles could feel, even from across the room. “And there aren’t any monsters under my bed?” he retorted, sarcastic. “I’m not a child, Charles.” 

“I’m sure if there were any, you’d long since have scared them off.” Charles wheeled himself around to the far side of the bed, wanting to put as much of a barrier between them and the awkwardness of transferring himself from chair to bed as possible. His arms weren’t nearly as strong as they had been before the serum, but fortunately they did not fail him this time. He arranged his legs under the blankets, self-conscious with the awareness of Erik’s eyes on him. “No, this is purely selfish, I’m afraid,” he said, and knew his smile was a bit brittle when he looked up at Erik again. “I’ve always hated camping and sleeping bags.”

Charles still couldn’t read Erik’s expression in the shadows, but he was so still he might as well have been one of the stone statues in the garden. Charles patted the mattress next to him, encouraging, and Erik finally relented. When he came back into the moonlight, there was no trace of any apprehension on his face; knowing the rigid control Erik exercised over himself, Charles did him the courtesy of not looking into his mind to see how he really felt. 

It was the closest they had been in over ten years, lying in bed next to each other, even though the mattress was large enough that they didn’t even come close to touching. For several minutes, Erik lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling, before he finally rolled over onto his side to face Charles. “I do have a hard time picturing you camping,” he admitted, “given your very vocal disgust when confronted with motels.” 

“My _entirely appropriate_ disgust, thank you,” Charles replied primly, grateful that Erik would play into the polite fiction when they both knew the real reason Charles shouldn’t sleep on the cold ground for hours. He reached out with one hand slowly, telegraphing the movement, and rested two fingers against Erik’s temple. It was unnerving, the way Erik was looking at him as they touched. Charles could feel his heart thudding in his chest. 

“Close your eyes,” he murmured. “Generally, that is what one does to sleep.”

A long, searching look, and Erik did what he was asked. 

“I’m going to find a good memory,” Charles continued, keeping his voice low. “Something to help send you to sleep. Once you go into a REM Cycle, I’ll try to keep your thoughts there.”

He remembered what it was like, the tumult of Erik’s mind, occasional flashes of warmth and light in the darkness. Charles touched one tentatively, and—

 _Marlene insisted that she recognized him, but Erik was dubious that was true when Anya had only recently started to focus on his face. Still, she giggled the way she did with no one else when he picked her up, her eyes wide and blue. He let her waving hand grab his, and she gripped it tightly. Her lips split into a toothless smile, and she_ shrieked _with sudden laughter—_

Erik’s eyes flew open and he batted Charles’s hand away from his temple. “No,” he snapped. “Not that.”

Charles’s throat felt tight; he didn’t trust himself to speak. It had been such a powerful memory at the forefront of Erik’s mind, one imbued with vivid joy. Even with their connection broken, Charles could still feel the echo of her tiny, precious weight in is arms, the love so terrifyingly intense it felt like it might break his ribs apart. “No,” he repeated, wiping the back of his hand over his eyes. “Not that.”

He didn’t say he was sorry, knowing that any expression that could be construed as pity right now would make Erik bolt. When he reached out again, Erik didn’t pull away, and Charles permitted himself the small comfort of grazing his fingers over his cheek before touching his temple again. 

Despite what his fellow mutants seemed to believe, reading minds was an imprecise art. Planting suggestions, hearing snatches of strongly emotional thoughts, manipulating actions: those were all far, far easier, so easy that the knowledge of what he could do by accident had terrified Charles when he had been a child. But finding an old memory, faded and tucked away, was more difficult, especially when a mind—like Erik’s was now—pushed and pulled at him in a tumult of emotions. It was almost unrecognizable as Erik’s, whose rigidly structured and ordered mind had been what had first called Charles to him in Florida, a mind like he had never felt before. 

Unthinking, Charles carded his fingers through Erik’s short hair. “I need you to calm your mind,” he murmured.

He felt against his wrist a warm puff of air as Erik sighed, and slowly the upheaval stilled, back into the precise structures Charles remembered so well. They felt unsteady to him now, though, unmoored in the absence of Erik’s power. Charles took a deep breath and _focussed_ —

—and he was in the library, or his library as it used to be. There were no bottles or dust, just the warm smell of leather and paper, sunlight slanting in from the large windows across the bookshelves. The titles were different now, though; Erik’s memories arranged in a way he could navigate carefully. Charles walked down the stacks, past the titles that were labelled in German, knowing that Erik would not want him to dredge up anything from that distant past. It might once have worked to balance him between rage of serenity to call up a memory of love and loss, but Charles wanted him to be happy here, to relax into sleep. 

Happy memories, however, were fewer and fewer the further Charles walked down the length of the library, trailing his fingers along the shelves. A warm tingle ran up his arm when they brushed the spine of one book, and he paused. Part of him wanted to keep walking, knowing that this memory might hurt Erik, too. It would almost certainly hurt Charles. He took another two steps forward, and then stopped. There was a chance that Erik would not let Charles this close to him again; stripped down and vulnerable, he’d let his guard down for the first time since he’d reappeared in Westchester. 

Charles turned and took the book down from the shelf, feeling the warmth of it tingle over his hands as he cracked it open.

*

_The National Mall had been a favourite haunt of Charles’s when he’d been a boy. After his father died, Sharon was not interested in museums or libraries or, well, Charles himself, but when she went shopping in DC he was generally permitted to wander off by himself so as not to be underfoot._

_When they had made it home from their latest recruiting trip, it had been early afternoon and Charles’s mind had been buzzing with all the minds he’d touched, all the people like them whose paths they’d crossed. It was very much like being high (Charles could state as much very confidently) and he had been reluctant to return to the bland, grey walls and narrow minds of the CIA._

_Fortunately, Erik had been willing enough (if bemused by Charles’s enthusiasm) to play tourist, letting Charles drag him from the Library of Congress down to the Lincoln Memorial. He’d stood staring at the statue for a long moment, the expression on his face so intent that Charles hadn’t dared peek into his mind._

_Now, the monument had emptied out as the afternoon started to drag toward evening. Charles leaned back on one elbow, enjoying the late afternoon sun. He’d almost forgotten the chess board between them, caught up in his enthusiasm for the future._

_“I tell you, we are at the start of something incredible, Erik. We can help them.”_

_Erik looked up from his contemplation of the board, expression sardonic. “Can we? Identification, that’s how it starts. It ends with being rounded up, experimented on, eliminated.”_

_There was no anger in his voice as he spoke—this was already starting to become a well-worn argument between them—but Charles found his eyes pulled down to Erik’s forearm nonetheless. He’d seen the numbers inked there for the first time on their travel, in the close quarters of their shared motel room. But even Erik’s persistent pessimism couldn’t drag down his mood today, and he shook his head._

_“Not this time. We have common enemies: Shaw; the Russians. They need us.”_

_“For now.”_

_Charles groaned theatrically, leaning back on both elbows and tilting his head back to the sky. “My friend, nothing you are going to say will dissuade me. You can be as grumpy as you would like tomorrow, but not this afternoon.”_

_“Mmm,” Erik responded, non-committal, though when Charles looked at him sidelong he could see Erik was trying not to smile. “And when were you planning to set aside your relentless optimism?” He moved a bishop and grinned, sharp and toothy. “Check.”_

_A glance at the board and Charles could see he had already lost. From his grin, Erik clearly knew it too. “Did you know that the Washington Monument was once the tallest structure in the world, until the Eiffel Tower was completed?” he said, hoping that redirecting the conversation would keep him from having to concede defeat._

_“_ Patzer, _” Erik snorted._

_He didn’t bother to dip into Erik’s mind for a translation: Charles had learned over the past few weeks that when Erik lapsed into German it was rarely a compliment. Instead, he leaned up and shoved Erik’s shoulder hard. It was rather like pushing a rock. Erik’s grin widened._

_Trying to recover the shards of his dignity (and avoid thinking about the firmness of Erik’s muscles under that tight turtleneck and leather coat), Charles raised his eyebrows and adopted the chilly stare with which he’d cowed his undergraduate students. “I’m merely attempting to expand your education, Erik. Now, kindly pay attention.”_

_Erik did not look cowed whatsoever. To the contrary, he looked rather like he was trying not to laugh again. He leaned back casually on his elbows on the steps, and waved one hand in a_ go on _gesture. Charles pressed his lips together to hide his own smile, “Thank you. As I was saying, it still is the tallest stone structure and obelisk in the world.”_

_“Your American exceptionalism at work, no doubt,” Erik teased. He looked sidelong at Charles, expression sly, and inclined his head toward the monument. “Do you suppose the architect was compensating for something?”_

_The slanting bars of the late afternoon sun made his pale eyes glow, emphasizing the wicked edge to his grin. The other facts Charles had painstakingly memorized as a child promptly evaporated at the implication. Well, it was rather a…prominent structure. He could feel colour rise in his cheeks, and he cleared his throat. “You aren’t intimidated, are you?” he inquired._

_It was dangerous; he usually looked thoroughly into the minds of men before making even an oblique approach, but the optimism of knowing he and Erik could change the world for so many mutants and the way Erik was lounging across the marble steps made him bold. He let his eyes drop briefly, pointedly, from Erik’s face to his crotch, and then turned his attention back to the monument. He could feel the heat of Erik’s startled, sudden lust slam against his mind, and he shifted on the stairs. Alone though they might currently be, they were still in public. Point Xavier, nonetheless._

_“Can you feel the engravings on the aluminum apex?” He inquired, as though his lecture hadn’t been interrupted at all. He had caught glimpses of the horrible ways in which Shaw had taught Erik to use his powers: fine detail and finesse had not played much of a role._

_At the challenge, the hot_ want _of Erik’s thoughts against his ebbed somewhat into thoughtful contemplation. Charles moved the chessboard out of the way and slid closer across the marble step. Erik glanced at him, then raised one hand, reaching out with his powers to encompass the metal at the tip of the structure. They slid against the aluminum, trying to gain purchase on the edges of the engravings, but not sinking into them. He frowned, pushing harder against the metal._

_Charles pressed his fingers against his temple, slipping easily into Erik’s mind to offer some assistance, and bringing the engravings into stark relief across his mind’s eye._

_“Are you asking me if_ I _can feel the engravings, or if you can?” Erik inquired, amused._

_“I’m simply helping you refine your focus, my friend.”_

_“You mean meddling.”_

_Charles grinned up at him, bright and unrepentant._

_Erik’s smile slowly faded, and he reached up to put his hand over Charles’s on his temple. “Concentrate on your own abilities, Charles,” he said, and leaned in to kiss him._

_At Oxford, Charles had been rather… free with his affections (“slutty,” Raven would call it, with her usual, brutal way of cutting through his rhetoric to the truth of the matter), and he had kissed more women than he could easily count. Men, too, though in smaller numbers; those encounters tended to be far more direct, and foreplay was not of much interest. As kisses went, this was one of the most chaste Charles could remember having, a quick, dry press of Erik’s lips against his._

_And yet. He felt his heart stutter in his chest, and his hand dropped from his temple to grip Erik’s shoulder hard._

_As soon as Erik started to draw back, Charles swept the chessboard carelessly into his satchel and stood up, starting down the steps without a backward glance. “We’re leaving,” he said to Erik, his voice tight._

_Erik scrambled to his feet and jogged down the stairs after him._

_“Charles, I—Charles, stop.”_

_He grabbed Charles’s shoulder and spun him around to face him. He looked panicked, and his hand hovered awkwardly in the air for a moment near Charles’s shoulder before he let it drop back to his side. He looked away, then pushed one hand through his hair, looking unusually flustered._

_“If you’re going to apologize to me, Erik, apologize for kissing me in a public place,” Charles told him, and continued even as Erik’s expression shut down entirely and he started to make what would undoubtedly have been a formal and flawlessly precise apology. “Because it’s going to take at least fifteen minutes before we find a decent hotel where I can spread you out on a bed and do some rather illegal things to you.”_

_Erik’s expression didn’t flicker, but Charles heard a musical chiming sound as the chain on the ornamental fences along the pathways started to rattle. It was the only warning he had before Erik grabbed him. Charles’s hand flew to his temple, trying to keep part of his mind on monitoring his surroundings as Erik kissed him again. This time, there was nothing chaste about it. Charles’s mouth parted under Erik’s, and Erik groaned low in his throat, a sound that rippled down Charles’s spine. Erik’s hand sought the small of his back, sliding under Charles’s tweed blazer and pressing against the tender dip of his spine, burning through the thin fabric of his shirt. Charles could feel the_ pull _on every bit of metal he was wearing, his watch and belt buckle and zipper all desperate to be closer to the inexorable magnetism of Erik’s body._

_When they broke apart to breathe, Erik rested his forehead against Charles’s. “You were saying something about a hotel?”_  
Charles wished he could stop time properly so he could hold onto this moment, Erik’s hands warm on his body and thoughts warm on his mind, the two of them temporarily wrapped in a cocoon of happiness that the rest of the world couldn’t penetrate so long as Charles had his fingers pressed against his temple.  
It was Erik who finally broke the spell. He let his hand drop from Charles’s back, glancing lightly over his hip as it did. Charles felt a fleeting shadow of wistfulness across Erik’s mind, the desire—quickly dismissed as impossible—to take Charles’s hand.  
Well, one couldn’t have everything; it was better not to dwell on the bittersweet. Charles shrugged his satchel higher up on his shoulder and tucked his free hand into his pocket so he wouldn’t give into the same temptation. He inclined his head toward the stairs, and they headed off together toward the heart of town. They didn’t speak; they didn’t need to, their arms brushing together every few steps and sharing small, secretive smiles as they tried not to walk too quickly. It wouldn’t do to draw unwanted attention. 

__

*

The walk to the hotel had never felt quite so long. With his eyes hidden behind sunglasses once more, Erik looked cool and removed; by contrast, Charles felt rather exposed. He was certain his cheeks heated every time Erik “accidentally” brushed against him. He felt rather like a student again, young and brash and apt to get an erection from a short skirt or a stiff breeze or an arse like Erik’s crossing his path.

Hoping he didn’t look as hot and bothered as he felt, Charles made a brief detour on their route to stop into a druggist’s as Erik loitered in the sidewalk outside. The brief respite from his company gave him a chance to put himself together again, though he felt an uncharacteristic twist of smug possessiveness curl in his gut as two teenage girls ahead of him in line giggled and whispered about the “unreal hunk” out front. 

Mine, _Charles thought proprietorially as he followed their gaze to where Erik was leaning against the store window._ He’s all mine, at least for tonight. __

_He had no compunction checking in under his own name at the Hotel Monaco; the Xavier family had been coming there for years, and it would ensure quick and discreet service. He knew Sharon had taken her share of lovers here while a young Charles had wandered up and down the National Mall. It was to become something of a family tradition, apparently. All it took was a gentle touch of fingers to temple as he smiled and chatted with the concierge and the scowling Erik Lehnsherr at his elbow (his hackles were up at the display of such opulent wealth. Charles wondered idly what he’d think of the Westchester estate) looked to the man like a sultry, rather leggy blonde._

_“Even the CIA won’t fail to notice_ this _as an expense, Charles,” Erik murmured as they walked toward the elevator, his breath warm at Charles’s ear. “Perhaps we could have tried something more subtle?”_

_“The CIA isn’t paying for this,” Charles replied absently, focussing on the elevator buttons to avoid looking up at Erik’s mouth. “I’d rather they not know we’re back in Washington yet.”_

_Erik leaned back against the wall of the elevator, watching him. After their proximity when walking down from the monument, the small distance felt very stark indeed. “We’ve sent them a group of teenage mutants. Do you think there will be a CIA left by the time we get there?”_

_“I told you, Erik; no pessimism today.” Charles responded blithely, willing the elevator to move faster. “I’m sure they, and the CIA, will do perfectly well in our absence. They struck me as very responsible young people. Besides, Raven will be there to look after them.”_

_He didn’t remark on the space Erik had put between them until they had reached the privacy of their suite. Walking through to the bedroom, Charles stretched out with his mind for the other guests present in the hotel._ It’s so beautiful out, _he whispered into their thoughts, eyes half-lidded with concentration,_ such a beautiful evening for a walk _._

_As their floor gradually emptied out, he turned to Erik, who was prowling around the room like a caged tiger, eyeing the lavish furnishings with disdain. He had money, Charles knew—his impeccably tailored wardrobe alone attested to that, not to mention his years of traveling around the world in search of Shaw—but in the stiff lines of his body and the set of his jaw, Charles could read the lingering discomfort with wealth of a boy who had grown up with nothing._

_“Yes, my family is quite wealthy,” he said plainly. “Is that going to be a problem, or can I still put my mouth on your cock?”_

_Erik’s head snapped around in his direction, and Charles once again found himself the sole object of his focus. He smiled, and casually shrugged out of his jacket, setting it neatly aside on a chair before starting on the buttons of his shirt._

_In three quick strides Erik had crossed the room and pushed Charles back up against the wall, grabbing his wrists and tugging his hands away from his shirt. His heart thudded hard in his ears at the way Erik looked at him, like he wanted to devour Charles whole. He pushed lightly at Erik’s grip, and felt a bolt of heat run straight to his groin when he couldn’t move his arms at all._

_He grinned up at Erik, exhilarated, and something in Erik’s expression flickered, softened. “The things you do to me, Charles,” he sighed, and let go of his wrists. Moving in so they were pressed fully against each other, Erik cupped his face in his hands and kissed him again._

__Oh. _Erik’s hands were warm and gentle on Charles’s face, affectionate. This was nothing like their kisses at the Lincoln Memorial; here, there was nothing to divide their focus, and no need to rush. He slid his hands over Erik’s hips, cupping his arse and pulling him in closer, not wanting any space between them. The kisses were slow and chaste for now, but there was an electric current of lust underneath it all that made Charles very, very aware of the bed only a few feet from them._

_Erik kissed with singular intensity, slow and unhurried now that Charles was in his grasp. Soft, fleeting presses of his lips at first, until Charles was leaning forward and seeking his mouth every time he pulled back and Erik was chuckling low in his throat, a sound Charles felt in the vibration of his chest rather than heard. His lips were warm and surprisingly soft, contrasted by the sharp bite of teeth when Erik playfully nipped his lower lip. One thigh pushed between Charles’s legs, heat and hard muscle pressed tantalizingly against Charles’s arousal, encouraging him to rock against it until the air seemed too thick in the room and his lungs were straining for a proper breath. Erik pressed his advantage, gripping Charles’s hip with one large hand and stroking his tongue in a slow, filthy slide over Charles’s own._

_It had been a while since he had been taken apart so meticulously. Pleasantly hazy, Charles let his head thunk back against the wall under the onslaught, kneading the tight muscle of Erik’s arse and rubbing up against the very obvious line of his erection until Erik’s breathing was as shaky as his own. His mind was completely unguarded for the first time in their acquaintance, thoughts leeching outward until the edges lapped at Charles’s mind, tantalizing in their invitation. He dipped in and out of the vivid memories, reliving flickers of lust and sex with previous partners through Erik’s eyes, all notably female._

_“Meddling,” Erik growled against his lips, and moved his hand from Charles’s hip to squeeze his cock lightly through his trousers. It twitched, eager, at the heat of his hand, driving all other thoughts temporarily out of Charles’s head. Traitor._

_“Do you know what to do with that, Mr. Lehnsherr? I’ll—unh—be only too happy to play Virgil to your Dante and guide you deeper into sin.”_

_“Still Jewish, Charles.”_

_Charles pressed harder against Erik’s erection and huffed a laugh. “I’d noticed.”_

_He was rewarded for his sass with another nip at his mouth, but it reminded Charles of the promise he had made earlier. He tweaked Erik’s primary motor cortex, forcing him to stumble back a few startled steps. Oh, the potential in that. Briefly, he entertained the fantasy of pinning Erik down on the bed with only his own mind serving as restraints, spreading him open and tasting every inch of him, keeping him from coming until Charles decided to let him. But that was for another day (and that there almost certainly be other days, if the way Erik was looking at him was any indication, made something bright and hot catch in Charles’s chest): for the moment, he had a promise to keep._

_Stalking forward, Charles knocked Erik back a few more steps with his mind, until the mattress hit the back of his knees and he fell back onto it. He didn’t spare a thought for elegance, dropping quickly to his knees and fumbling open the buckle of Erik’s belt and the fly of his trousers with eager hands. Erik swore and dug his fingers roughly into Charles’s hair, gripping hard._

_“Did any of your women go on their knees for you?” Charles asked him sweetly. He could look and see for himself, of course, but he liked the way his words made Erik’s breath go ragged, the hint of pain as long fingers tightened in his hair. “I used to wank in the shower while thinking about this, you know, when you were out on your morning runs. Wondering how you’d taste. That or your hands.” He turned his head, tugging against the pressure of Erik’s fingers in his hair, and kissed the heel of his palm. “I’ve never sucked off a circumcised man before.”_

_“You talk too much,” Erik bit out. He kept one hand threaded into Charles’s hair, and pushed his trousers down off his slim hips with the other. It was a bit like having one’s birthday presents unwrapped before one even got a chance to fondle the bow, but Charles couldn’t complain at the contents. Erik’s prick was as gorgeous as he was: flushed dark with arousal, long and thick. Remembering his jibe about the Washington Monument, Charles had to press his lips together to stifle a laugh—Erik certainly had no reason to be intimidated by anything. Settling more comfortably between his legs, Charles leaned in to nuzzle at the base of him, breathing in the hot scent of his arousal. Erik was strung tight as a piano wire, and the muscles of his thighs twitched under Charles’s hands at his slow exploration._

_“Do you know how long I’ve spent thinking about your_ verdammte _mouth?” Erik demanded, and stroked his thumb over the swell of Charles’s lower lip. “You weren’t the only one who had to take matters into your own hand, Charles. Every morning when you slept in...the things I wanted to do to you.”_

_Charles saw himself in Erik’s mind’s eye clearly, sprawled in sleep in the uncomfortable motel bed—as any sane person would be at seven in the morning; it was hardly “sleeping in”—his hair a tousled fright, his lips looking vividly red against his pale skin and the crumpled white sheets. He’d wanted to crawl into bed with Charles, press him flat against the mattress and kiss him awake, until his already full mouth was swollen and bruised. He hadn’t known how to tell if Charles felt like he did, how to ask without risking their friendship._

_“We don’t have to be back to the Pentagon for hours yet, my friend,” Charles said, then pressed a slow, deliberate line of kisses up Erik’s length. “You’ll have to show me what you had in mind.” Then finally,_ finally _, he took Erik in his mouth._

_This time, when Erik spoke in German, Charles was certain it was a compliment. The hand in his hair tightened, then went slack, dropping to cup his jaw with surprising gentleness. He looked up through his lashes when Erik stroked his thumb over his lower lip again. His pupils were blown wide and dark, fixed intently on him. Charles slipped into his mind and saw himself through his eyes: lips stretched wide and spit-shiny around Erik’s cock, his cheeks pinked with pleasure and arousal. Charles made a small noise, muffled around Erik’s length, at the heat of that image. The thumb pushed more firmly against the stretch of his lips, pressing into wet heat alongside his erection. Holding Erik’s gaze through his lashes, Charles hollowed his cheeks out and sucked._

_Erik groaned and, through their intertwined thoughts, Charles felt the echo of pleasure reverberate down his spine. Abandoning all teasing and finesse, he wrapped one hand around the base of Erik’s cock and sank down on him as far as he could, opening his throat to take him deeper. Erik gasped and his fingers clawed back into Charles’s hair, hips hitching up against his mouth, as he sucked him off, quick and dirty._

_It didn’t take long before Erik twisted his fingers hard in Charles’s hair and gasped out his name. Charles ignored the warning and dug his fingernails into Erik’s thigh, urging him on. His thoughts went white with the telepathic feedback—Charles quickly pressed the heel of his palm against his own prick to keep from coming in his pants as Erik bucked against his mouth and climaxed._

_They were both silent for a long moment afterward, breathing evening out and heartbeats returning to normal. “Well,” Charles ventured at last, sitting back on his heels, “How did reality live up to your expectations?”_

_With an inarticulate groan, Erik flopped back, sprawling full-length across the mattress. Pleased with that response and pleasantly hazy with Erik’s pleasure still ringing in his mind, Charles remained on his knees and pressed his face into Erik’s thigh. His jaw ached, though whether that was from the workout it had just taken or his current, rather silly grin, he wasn’t entirely sure._

_“Mmm,” Erik hummed, voice warm and languid. He reached out absently for Charles, but let his arm drop back on the bed when he couldn’t reach from his prone position._ “Komm her.” __

_The words were close enough to English for Charles to understand even if he didn’t have the option of pulling the meaning from Erik’s mind. Feeling playful, however, he lightly nipped Erik’s inner thigh, feeling his muscles jump in response. “Still English, Erik.”_

__“Hmm? Ach ja, genau.” __

_Still a bit unsteady, Charles got to his feet. Erik lay mostly dressed and prone on the mattress, eyes half-closed and limbs sprawled. Most men would have looked ridiculous with their trousers half pulled down like that, Charles thought fondly, but Erik managed somehow still to look beautiful. “Don’t fall asleep on me yet, Mr. Lehnsherr,” he teased, nudging Erik’s knee with his own. “I still have plans for you.”_

_Erik smiled lazily at him and leaned up on his elbows. “Plans?” he inquired, clearly taking pains to speak in English. His accent was thicker now, laying heavily on the syllables like they were new and strange on his tongue. “Raven warned me about you, Xavier—you had best not have any designs on my virtue.”_

_Feeling like he rather deserved a medal for not pouncing on Erik and kissing him breathless at that, Charles slowly unbuttoned his shirt. “Designs upon your refractory period, possibly.”_

_Again, he felt the_ tug _at his watch and belt, this time hard enough that he almost fell forward onto the bed. Erik smirked at him, completely unapologetic. “Komm. Her.”_

_He sat up as Charles moved to straddle him on the bed, sliding his hands up Charles’s bare sides. It tickled a bit over his ribs; he squirmed, and Erik huffed a laugh against his neck. He pushed the shirt off slowly, following the reveal of bare skin with his mouth, kissing Charles’s shoulders and collarbones and down his chest as Charles arched into him._

_“These freckles are ridiculous, Charles.”_

_“I can...ah...put my shirt back on, if you’d rather.”_

_A sharp bite to one of his nipples told him what Erik thought of that suggestion._ Jesus. _Charles’s hips bucked helplessly forward against Erik’s abdomen._

_“I think I’d like to find out how far down this blush goes, actually,” Erik said thoughtfully, as if observing a particularly interesting scientific phenomenon. His hands went to Charles’s trousers, unfastening the button as he tugged the zipper down with his powers._

_Not to be outdone, Charles grabbed the hem of Erik’s turtleneck and yanked it up. Erik swore at him as it bunched around his shoulders, impeding his arms, but he was laughing, unwilling to stop his efforts to get Charles’s trousers off long enough to remove his shirt properly._

_Never let it be said that a Xavier wasn’t willing to do whatever it took to win. Charles gave up his grip on Erik’s turtleneck long enough to press his fingers against his temple—leaning back quickly when Erik tried to grab his arm and almost overbalancing—and_ pushed _Erik flat on the bed again. Ignoring the litany of frustrated German that followed, Charles took his time peeling off Erik’s clothing, until he was completely bare under him._

_Sharing a motel room with Erik back and forth across America, Charles had caught glimpses of bare skin here and there (though, generally, Erik had gone for a run, showered and dressed, and was becoming impatient by the time Charles had even started contemplating his morning cuppa), but now with Erik laid out under him, bare and as vulnerable as a man like him could ever get, Charles’s breath was taken away by the stark beauty of his body. There was nothing soft or comfortable about him, any excess ruthlessly stripped away to lean, spare muscle. He was marked by his history, from the faded scars across his abdomen and chest to the inked black numbers on his arm. Feeling oddly reverent, Charles traced one finger in the ghost of a touch down the centre of his chest. He wanted to touch all over, take his time and learn each mark and scar, cherish a man who had clearly been so little cherished in his life._

_“Charles....” There was an edge to Erik’s voice. He was not a man who would take kindly to being pitied; Charles had been silent and staring for too long. Shaking his head, he leaned down and kissed Erik quickly, hungrily, before getting up off the bed. He was too eager to be pressed skin against skin to dwell on the tight, warm feeling in his chest. He stripped off his remaining clothes and let go his mental hold of Erik as he returned to the bed._

_Immediately, Erik hooked an arm around his shoulders and twisted them, so that Charles ended up flat on his back with Erik on top of him, their legs tangled together. The lovely heat and firmness of Erik’s abdomen against Charles’s rather neglected erection was lovely; with a pleased hum, Charles closed his eyes and rocked languorously up against him. He had never tried this before with another man, the slow build of kiss and touch, the scent of sweat and cologne, and the taste and feel of skin. He worked one hand down between them, skating the backs of his fingers along Erik’s spent prick. “Wake up,” he murmured, the words half-lost in another kiss. “I have nefarious plans for you.”_

_“I’m thirty-three, not seventeen, Charles,” Erik laughed at him, pulling back and kissing the tip of his nose. “Have some patience.”_

_Charles bit back the reminder of who, of the two of them, had already had an orgasm. Rolling his head to the side, he spotted his abandoned satchel, and the druggist purchase therein. He pushed at Erik’s shoulder again, with no more effect than the previous attempt. “Be a love, would you?”_

_Erik blinked at him, then glanced sidelong at the bag. A moment later, the small tin of Vaseline worked its way free and drifted over to the bed. Erik looked speculative._

_“You know what to do with that?” Charles asked._

_“I gather the basic mechanics of it, yes.”_

_Charles watched Erik slick his fingers, fingers that had figured prominently in Charles’s fantasies, his heart pounding loudly in his ears. “Slowly,” he cautioned, mindful of the fact that this was a first for Erik._

_Erik kissed him quiet, and trailed slick fingers up the back of Charles’s thigh, encouraging him to wrap one leg around his narrow hips. Naked in bed with a gorgeous man whose cock he had just sucked, and yet this was the moment where Charles felt strangely shy, vulnerable. He hitched his leg up higher on Erik’s hip, and breathed in sharply through his nose as he felt the blunt pressure of Erik’s fingers press against, then into him._

_Erik stilled his hand immediately, breaking away from the kiss to rest his forehead against Charles’s. “You’re all right?”_

_“Don’t stop.”_

_He didn’t._

_Erik took Charles at his word, and worked him open slowly, slowly. Charles lost track of time in the stretch and press of long, elegant fingers moving in and out of him, tortuously patient. Erik would stroke and press and_ curl _his fingers in Charles’s body until he was shaking and desperate, and then would stop, withdraw, leave Charles to claw at his shoulders in protest as he re-slicked his fingers and pushed into him again. Two fingers, then three, then four. Charles threw his head back against the pillow and panted raggedly, unable to keep from clenching around the delicious pressure, pushing Erik’s fingers harder against his prostate._

_It was getting hard to concentrate, his telepathy bleeding outward until he wasn’t entirely sure where his thoughts ended and Erik’s began. He could feel the tight clutch of his body around Erik’s fingers, melding seamlessly into the feeling of Erik in him, a feedback loop of lust. He was close already, God, but it wasn’t quite enough. “So help me, Erik, if you aren’t ready to fuck me by now—” he gasped out._

_Before he had to come up with an ending to that threat, Erik’s fingers were gone and Charles found himself flipped over onto his stomach. Hot, wet kisses trailed up the length of his spine, before strong hands gripped his arse and spread him open; Charles muffled his moan into a pillow and pushed up against his grip, wanting._

_He felt it down to the tips of his toes when Erik finally penetrated him._

_“Ah, fuck,” Erik groaned as he bottomed out inside of Charles, breath hot and harsh against his ear. He rolled his hips slightly, and Charles felt the shock of it all the way up his spine. Erik’s hand came up to cover his where it was fisted into the sheets, and he pressed more kisses over Charles’s shoulders until Charles bucked up against him in a helpless, wordless plea for him to just_ move _._

_“Fuck,” Erik gasped again, this time almost a snarl, and Charles felt his frayed control snap. He fucked into Charles, deep and hard and unapologetic, giving into the demands of his body. Charles kept up as best he could, rubbing himself off against the mattress, but his muscles were taut and uncoordinated, completely overwhelmed with sensation. He came without Erik ever touching his dick, feeling like he might shake apart entirely._

_He came back to himself briefly when he felt the mattress shift. Pleasure was still fizzing along his nerve endings, leaving his powers spread dreamily over the hotel, touching so many minds. Absently, he realized the shower was running, and sent a drowsy, nonverbal question in Erik’s direction. He could feel Erik smile in response, heard his quiet “Go to sleep, Charles.”_

_He drifted._

__

*

He woke disoriented in the dark room, mind once again returned to the confines of his own thoughts. He frowned, drowsily aware that he was sticky and uncomfortable, and shifted slightly. He froze immediately, soreness making itself known along with the memory of where he was and with whom.

Their first night on the road together when recruiting, Charles had got up in the middle of the night to go to the washroom and had found a knife to his throat almost immediately, the other metal in the room thrumming dangerously as Erik had stared at him with sleep-fogged, murderous eyes. Then he’d blinked, refocused, frowned. “Charles?” was all he had said before the knife dropped, the room stilled, and he’d rolled over and gone back to sleep. 

They hadn’t ever spoken about it. Charles knew enough about Erik’s history to guess why he would sleep so lightly and react so violently when startled. After that, Charles had taken to saying Erik’s name quietly whenever he stretched or got up in the night, whenever Erik’s vivid, haunting dreams dragged him out of sleep.

“Erik,” Charles murmured, but there was no response. He rolled over onto his back, grimacing at the feel of the come-tacky sheet pulling away from his stomach. Erik was lying on his side facing away from Charles, who contemplated the veritable wall of his shoulders from this angle. He didn’t stir, even at his name. Charles brushed against his sleeping mind curiously, and found it utterly at peace. His heart ached, but not unpleasantly. 

Shifting across the bed, Charles wrapped one arm around Erik’s waist and pressed his face between his shoulder blades, breathing in the warm scent of his skin. Soon, the rhythm of Erik’s breathing and the whisper of his heartbeat lulled Charles back to sleep.

*

When he woke again, it was daylight, and Erik was watching him. Charles blinked tiredly, trying to focus on his face, and seeing Erik’s pale eyes go warm with amusement. They were still pressed very close together, and Charles remembered with some mortification his middle of the night decision to snuggle. Whatever he saw on Charles’s face made Erik chuckle, and he slid one broad hand down Charles’s spine. Long fingers slipped between the cheeks of his arse again, tracing slow, maddening circles around where Charles was still tender from the previous evening.

Charles bit his lower lip and exhaled hard through his nose. “You aren’t planning to start anything you can’t complete, I trust.” 

Erik snorted and pressed Charles forward against him. Ah. _Definitely able to make good on his promises, then._

_“I woke up with you wrapped around me,” Erik growled softly at him. “You’ve been driving me out of my mind for hours, Charles; you don’t know how tempting it was to roll you onto your back and wake you up with my cock in you instead.”_

_Christ. Charles rolled them over, slinging one leg over Erik’s hip to straddle him as he pushed Erik onto his back. “For future reference,” he gritted out as he clumsily grabbed the Vaseline off the bedside table and shoved it into Erik’s hand, “you are more than welcome to do so. For now, I plan to ride you until I wipe that smirk off your face.”_

__

*

He woke again. It was the middle of the night, and Erik was watching him. Charles blinked tiredly, trying to focus on his face, disoriented in the transition between waking and dreaming. They were close together on the bed, close enough that Charles could feel the warmth of Erik’s skin, and see the desire in his eyes even in the half-light of the room. Sleepily, he reached up to cup his cheek, stroke his thumb over Erik’s lower lip. As Erik reached for him, Charles moved to sling one leg over his hip again, fuck him stupid.

He couldn’t. Under the blankets, his legs remained dead and cold and useless. It was a cruel trick his mind had played, framing the memory from Charles’s own perspective. The jolt of reality was a shock of cold down his spine, sweeping away the last vestiges of their shared and warm dream.

Erik didn’t immediately notice Charles’s hesitation, pushing his hands up under the hem of his nightshirt, sending sparks of sensation skittering through him. Charles exhaled shakily at the contact. He hadn’t been touched in _so long_. 

“Tell me what you need from me, Charles,” Erik said thickly, one hand sliding lower over his abdomen. “I don’t know how I...what feels good?” His fingers skirted the invisible line on Charles’s skin where sensation became muffled as he spoke. A hard lump rose in Charles’s throat, heavy and _angry_. Of course he had to ask; of course he kept his hand away from Charles’s back and the scar that marred it. How to put back together the broken toy that was Charles Xavier?

There had been a specialist at the hospital, with a too-bright smile and an artificially cheerful gloss over his thoughts, who had gone into great detail about reflex versus psychogenic erections. He’d been armed with statistics on ejaculation and fertility, and explanations that tried desperately to reassure Charles how satisfying sex (always framed as with a female partner) could still be, making Charles’s already battered spirit shrivel with humiliation. He had taken and read the pamphlets though, so it didn’t surprise him that he was hard after the intimacy of the dream, the psychic sensations of touching and being touched. It seemed to surprise Erik, though, who sucked in a sharp breath and growled his name, and brought all that humiliation back. 

Blinking hard, Charles pushed Erik down onto his back with his mind like he had done all those years ago in their hotel, pinning his arms to the mattress. “Let me,” he said. He didn’t want Erik to touch him, to realize all the ways that Charles was unfixable. When Erik left (and he would leave; of course he would leave), Charles didn’t want it to be because of all the things he could no longer do. 

There was no objection to the mental restraints—Erik’s mind was a bright flare of lust in Charles’s awareness, his breathing ragged in the still room as Charles maneuvered himself closer to Erik. Charles pushed his pyjama bottoms down and took him in one bandaged hand, biting his lower lip at the low groan that pulled from Erik’s chest. 

“Fuck, I’d forgotten how good you were at that.”

It could be any other night that Charles had snuck down to Erik’s room after the children were in bed. Any other night, but for Erik’s betrayal and Charles’s paralysis and all the years that lay between them now. He swallowed hard against the bitterness that rose in the back of his throat like bile. Well, if Magneto wanted to fuck, then they could fuck. He would just damn well have to accommodate what Professor Xavier wanted to get off. 

Closing his eyes, he _pushed_ into Erik’s mind, settling in so that he could feel his hand as if it were stimulating his own prick instead. Ignoring Erik’s thoughts butting against his mind, he reached out mental tendrils to light up nerve endings, make Erik’s body feel hands stroking down his narrow hips and thighs, where Charles himself could no longer feel. 

“Charles, what are you—” Erik gasped out as Charles spread his legs for him. The rest of the sentence was lost in a startled moan as Charles lit up his mind with the feeling of being stretched wide and penetrated, a shade too rough— _like you always did to me. Like we’ll never be able to do again._

Erik writhed against the phantom sensation, fingers digging hard into the sheets and synapses sparkling with heat and lust and want, and Charles permitted him enough physical control to do so. But when Charles pressed against the neurons that linked to his prostate, and Erik _shouted_ in pleasure, he quickly cut the sound short. 

“Quiet,” he hissed into Erik’s shoulder, squeezing his eyes shut. “You’ll wake Hank.” 

Through Erik’s mind and sensations, he felt hot and wound tight with arousal, but he was distantly aware of his own nausea, the tears stinging his eyes.

Charles squeezed his eyes shut and hid his face in Erik’s shoulder, not looking at him as Erik’s hips rocked against nothing and his breathing grew increasingly ragged, until his prick pulsed in Charles’s hand and he came hard, silently. Charles felt the shaky aftershocks ripple through Erik’s body as if it was his own, the lassitude that came hard on the heels of orgasm. 

He withdrew from Erik’s mind more gently than he’d intruded, his own body feeling as wrung-out and limp as Erik’s in sympathetic sensation. He’d fantasized about trying this, in happier times; about the noises Erik might make with Charles inside of him, how tight and hot he would feel. They’d never had a chance. 

He knew they should talk about this, but wanted to leave instead, now, drown out the entire evening under the amber weight of whiskey and hide in his own room until his anger at Erik and his own despair had faded, and the dirty, shameful feeling on his skin was a bad memory. 

Beside him, Erik chuckled and stretched languorously against the bed. He rolled over onto his side, expression blissed-out. “I didn’t know you could do that. You’ve been holding out on me, Charles.” His thumb stroked Charles’s jawline, and Charles caught the flicker of curiosity about what that beard would feel like against his skin, before he leaned in to kiss him. 

Quickly, Charles turned his face away. 

Erik stopped. 

The silence stretched out, painfully. 

Charles’s heart pounded in his ears, his stomach clenched with apprehension and shame. He didn’t want to kiss Erik and pretend that everything was all right, that they could go back to normal. He wouldn’t be able to stand it, having Erik try to stay out of obligation, before he’d really come to terms with what their lives would be like now. Erik had no idea; he had _no fucking idea_ because he hadn’t been there through the mortification of the early weeks of trying to build enough arm strength to get himself in and out of his chair unassisted; of having to retrain his body how to do everything, even use the bloody _toilet_ ; of Hank being so relentlessly kind and understanding of each fall and accident that Charles had wanted to die. 

He had no idea because he had left Charles to die, and Charles had retaliated by assaulting him, and nothing could erase that now. He wouldn’t ask Erik for his forgiveness, not when Charles knew himself incapable of extending the same. 

Feeling like he was going to scream or, worse, start to weep, Charles twisted away from Erik and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. 

Beside him, Erik was very, very still. When Charles sent out an inquiring tendril against his mind, he found it firmly rebuffed by adamantium mental shields. 

He heard Erik breathe out hard through his nose, and then the mattress dipped briefly as Erik shifted away from him and stood up. Charles dropped his hands, trying to find words if not to apologize then at least to bring them back to the uneasy détente they’d achieved before. The bathroom door slammed behind Erik before he had a chance. Shortly, Charles heard the sound of the shower running. 

He pushed himself up, and sat for a while, looking at his hands. The memory of Washington had ended with them going back to the Pentagon, he recalled; they had left their hotel room only reluctantly, with many lingering kisses exchanged just inside the door. They’d gone back to find Raven and the others had made an absolute mess of the quarters they’d been given. Moira had been appalled, Charles disappointed, Erik unsurprised. Later that night, after Erik had snuck into his room, locked the door, and swept the room with his powers for any bugs, he’d demanded Charles teach him how to pleasure him with his mouth, and had teasingly called him “Professor X” again and again as they’d fucked until, later, the name itself reflexively made Charles half-hard. The name “Magneto,” by contrast, had made him cry with laughter; however, using it would unfailingly make Erik pounce on him to kiss him quiet. 

His hands swam blurrily in his vision. How naive they both had been.

When the bathroom door opened again, Charles quickly rubbed one hand over his face and looked up. Wrapped only in a towel, his hair damp and curling, Erik looked gorgeous and paradoxically untouchable. His expression hardened when he saw Charles was still in his bed. 

“You got what you wanted, didn’t you?” he asked flatly. “I’d like to sleep now. I’m sure I’ll be able to manage on my own.”

Charles didn’t rise to the bait of Erik’s tone. “Of course,” he replied. 

Aware of Erik’s eyes on him, he carefully maneuvered himself into his chair, making a face when he pushed back the sheets to see the wet spot on his pyjamas from his own orgasm. He would need to shower too before trying to go back to sleep. 

As if sleep would come easily for either of them. 

He paused at the door and looked back at Erik, who was still standing framed in the light from the bathroom. “We’ll talk tomorrow,” he said, making it a statement. 

Though he couldn’t hear the sigh, he saw it in the movement of Erik’s chest and shoulders. “Good night, Charles.”

Much to his own surprise, he did fall asleep again, and was undisturbed until morning. Blinking in the watery light, Charles let his mind spread out over the house, checking on its other residents. 

Erik was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All my notes: let me show them to you:
> 
> German translation from Erik's first dream: "Genes are the key that unlocks the door to a new age, Erik."
> 
> Sulfamylon cream: Name taken from /Burns Regenerative Medicine and Therapy/ By Rong Xiang Xu. From what I could determine, burn creams like sulfamylon weren’t invented until the 60s. Technically it's from 1964, so a bit late for this scene, but in a world with mutants perhaps it was put on the market earlier. 
> 
> Apart from the mutant-related ones, all the headlines Charles skims over in Erik's stack of newspapers were actual stories. 
> 
> German from Erik's second dream: "See for yourself how you killed her, Erik. How could a weak human survive being sired by a creature without a heart?"
> 
> The "first move advantage" theory in chess wasn't debunked until 1988. Weaver Adams, one of the leading American masters, was a strong proponent of this theory. Adams also believed that E4 (which Charles opens with) was White’s strongest move, and that if both sides played the best moves thereafter, “White ought to win.” 
> 
> Despite the white advantage being the prevailing accepted theory, Erik's chess icon is Israel Albert Horowitz, who always chose black. He beat Adams in a match they played; using the invaluable site http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1625053, I've echoed their moves with Charles and Erik in this fic. 
> 
> The Hotel Monaco is old enough as a building to be appropriate for Charles and Erik's sex-jaunt, but the hotel aspect is anachronistic.


	3. Part III

III

She woke from a deep sleep abruptly, sucking in a panicked gasp of air as if she had just resurfaced from deep underwater. The house was silent save for the ticking of her clock, but unease made goosebumps rise on her arms. She’d been able to dismiss feelings like that once upon a time, before she’d become a parent. Now, she rose quickly and wrapped her robe around herself. She was being silly, she knew, but she wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep until she’d checked on her children.

Wanda was an almost invisible lump in her bed, camouflaged by mounds of stuffed toys both on and under the blankets with her. Peter’s light was on, but when she eased the door open, she found him sprawled on his stomach and snoring. Though her son would likely sleep through an earthquake, Magda was still as quiet as possible as she came into the room to tug the rumpled sheet out from under him, to tuck him in and kiss his hair like he would no longer tolerate when awake. 

It was when she went to draw the blinds over Peter’s window that she saw the man standing on the sidewalk, staring up at their house. Her unease increased momentarily, and eased only somewhat when she recognized the tense posture. He started to walk away, then hesitated when he obviously caught sight of her. 

Self-consciously, Magda tugged her robe more tightly around herself, and glanced back at her sleeping son. He’d been more quiet and introspective in the weeks since Erik had left again; though she’d prayed G-d only knew how many times for Peter to settle down, once she’d gotten her wish she’d found she missed his persistent chatter. She didn’t want to invite more pain into his life. 

Erik was still there, still watching, when she turned back to the window, and for better or worse, he was Peter’s father. She raised one finger in a silent request for him to wait just one moment, then tugged the curtains shut. 

By the time she made it downstairs (hastily trying to smooth her hair into something resembling order and tugging on a jacket over her bathrobe) and opened the door, Erik was already walking away again and didn’t respond when she called his name. She had to chase him, barefoot, halfway down the block to catch his arm. He looked down at her, startled, as though he’d forgotten where he was and why. 

“Come inside, Erik,” Magda said, though the look on his face made her let go of him and take a cautious step back. Far from the injured but cocky man who had left her home onths ago to travel to New York, he looked haunted now, worn down to almost nothing. 

After a moment, he blinked, seemed to focus properly on her face, and nodded. He still hesitated, however, until she grabbed his elbow and all but pulled him back up the sidewalk. Something about him wasn’t right; he seemed a bit disoriented, and didn’t reach past her with his abilities to open the door or turn the lights on. 

“Are you high?” she demanded in a whisper as she closed and locked the door behind them. G-d, that would be all that she’d need. Right now Peter’s delinquency only extended to petty and not-so-petty theft, but he had at least stayed off drugs. 

He leaned against the wall heavily and pinched the bridge of his nose. “No,” he said eventually, just when she’d wondered if he’d forgotten the question. “Quite the opposite.”

“That’s illuminating.” Her instincts were to keep her jacket on, keep as many layers as possible between her and Erik Lehnsherr, but sheer bloody-minded stubbornness made her take it off in spite of that. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing how much he twisted her up in knots. 

“Char—Professor Xavier and his...colleague...were quite insistent on a power-suppressing drug for the duration of my visit,” he elaborated. “I missed my last dose, so it must be starting to wear off. It’s taking its time, though,” he added as a muttered afterthought. He reached out with one hand, and she saw the deadbolt wiggle ever so slightly, before Erik dropped his hand and let his head fall back against the wall with a thunk. He was very pale. 

Magda tried to imagine Peter walking slowly everywhere, artificially constrained to normalcy. It made her queasy. She took Erik’s small bag from his hand and turned away. “You need to get some sleep, Lehnsherr; you always show up on my doorstep looking like you’re about to collapse. You need to shave, too; what, did something die on your face?”

“I’ll try not to make a habit of it,” he replied, bringing one hand up to rub at his scruffy beard ruefully. Despite the tiredness in his voice, he didn’t follow her when Magda turned for the stairs instead of leading him through to the living room again. 

“Don’t get any ideas,” she whispered over her shoulder, gesturing impatiently. “You look like you’re going to sleep for a month, and I’d like to be able to use my couch on occasion.”

“I don’t tend to sleep peacefully,” he warned her. “It would be best if I stayed outside.”

“It would be best if my neighbours don’t see a strange man turning up in my yard in the middle of the night,” she countered. It had taken them long enough to warm to a single mother when she’d first arrived, a process that had been set back a few years when Wanda had arrived and her father had walked out instead of making good on his promises to them. She didn’t want to go through the gossip again, for the kids’ sake if not for her own.

Reluctantly he followed her, but he looked around the comfortable room as though it were a prison cell. Magda tried not to be too offended by that, and turned her back politely so he could undress, sitting on the edge of the bed. 

“Just so you know, if you wake the kids up, you’ll be the one who has to deal with them.” 

“Understood.”

Magda didn’t look at him as she took off her robe, but still felt his eyes on her, making her skin prickle under her thin nightgown. Despite her earlier words, she wouldn’t mind if he made a pass at her; what they’d had wasn’t the lasting kind, but it had been good for its brief duration. 

Though he watched her intently as she climbed back into bed alongside him, though the bed wasn’t so large that she was able to avoid brushing against his bare skin, he didn’t try to touch her. After she turned out the bedside light, Magda reflected that he might not have really been seeing _her_ at all.

*

When Erik woke, it was to the sensation of being watched. He cracked his eyes open, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling for a moment, before rolling over onto his side. His joints protested the movement, stiff from long inactivity, and he rubbed one hand blearily over his face before focussing on the small, solemn face staring at him from over the side of the bed. Magda’s youngest...Wanda, he thought her name was.

“Do you know what time it is?” he asked gruffly, and part of the face immediately retreated behind a large stuffed bear. One of its eyes had long since come loose, and it looked rather patchy. What he could see of the little girl’s forehead and hair behind this valiant and weathered guardian shook slightly: _No._

Fine. Erik pushed himself up on his elbows, looking around the room for the clock he could sense, before the realization settled into his bones that he _could_ sense it. His mouth tasted foul and his head was cottony with withdrawal but he could feel the metal in the room again. It knocked the breath out of him, and he lay back heavily. It was 5:30, if the hands on the clock were accurate, but the light through the gap in the curtains was far too bright for it to be morning. He’d been asleep, inside, for more than twelve hours. 

“Are you sick?” a small voice, muffled in stuffing and fake fur, inquired. Erik rolled his head to the side again. Her eyes had appeared once more between the ears of her bear, and she was regarding him with open suspicion. Then, in a rush, “Mama said it was time for you to get up and come have dinner, but if you’re sick you should stay in bed. Mama _always_ makes us stay in bed if we’re sick. It’s because Peter sometimes pretends so he doesn’t have to go to school, even though he says he doesn’t.” 

It took a moment for Erik to digest that. Children made him uneasy, and he wondered why Magda hadn’t left him to his own devices or come to fetch him herself. “And you’ve never told a fib to get out of doing your chores?” He assumed she had chores to do; he had no idea how old she was. 

The bear was lowered a bit more, then held out to him in lieu of an answer. Guilt was writ large on her face, however, and the animal appeared to be some manner of peace offering or bribe. Aha. Erik raised one eyebrow wryly, but he took the bear from her and examined it. The loose eye was hanging from a long thread, but it was backed with a metal loop. Carefully, he pushed it back into place and drew the backing out in fine filaments, threading them into the weak fabric. The effort made his hand shake and a throbbing pain rise at his temples, but it felt good to stretch his abilities again after so long, like working out a cramped muscle. 

Finally satisfied with the result—a little crooked, with silvery glints in the fur around the eye from the metal threads—he turned the bear around for the girl’s approval. She chewed on her lower lip for a long time, before finally nodding and holding her arms out for the bear. Once safely returned to its mistress, it was tucked under her chin and cuddled close. 

If only fixing everything were so easy. 

“Tell your mother I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

Another shake of the head, and Erik closed his eyes briefly, a plea for patience. “I’m sure I can find my way down to the kitchen.”

The mattress sank as Wanda clambered up onto it with some difficulty, given her plush hindrance. She crawled over the bed, one knee digging rather painfully into Erik’s thigh as she passed, making the threadbare bear dance with one hand. She held the bear up in Erik’s direction, waggling it as she made it “talk”: “Mama says you’ll fall asleep again and she wants to make sure you don’t because you’re being—” and here her voice changed, into what Erik imagined was meant to be an imitation of Magda’s voice, “as lazy as _Peter_.”

Erik snorted. That did indeed sound like something Magda might say. And she wasn’t entirely wrong: Erik was not, as a rule, prone to self-pity; he had never had a place in his life safe enough in which to indulge in it, and anger had always been a far more useful emotion to him, driving him through pain and disillusionment and dead-ends in his hunt for Shaw. But now, every time he closed his eyes he saw again the way Charles had turned his face away, as if unable to stand the thought of Erik kissing him. He hadn’t even wanted Erik to touch him, despite the tentative reestablishment of...if not trust, then something approaching it, throughout the course of the evening. He’d hoped....

But that was the problem with hope. It lead one to be weak, vulnerable; it encouraged naïveté. Charles had been kind to him only because Charles was kind to everyone, friends and strays and enemies alike. When he had made it clear he thought of Erik as the basest sort of creature, was it any surprise that he didn’t want to be reminded of who he was in bed with? He’d wanted to get off; it hadn’t meant anything more than that. Pragmatic as he tried to be, Erik would not begrudge him that. 

A plush paw poked him firmly in the cheek. “Are you sleeping again?”

He pushed thoughts of Charles firmly aside. He was angry, or so he told himself, so angry his heart ached and his ribs felt too tight around his lungs. But that was not the business of a child. He exhaled hard, and then forced a smile at her. She wasn’t all that much older than Anya had been when she’d died, and though he was never at ease around children as a consequence, there were some things that he remembered how to do. 

Taking the bear from her, he held it up in front of his face and lowered his voice to a growl. “I’m not sleeping; I’m hibernating.” He pulled the blankets up higher with his other hand, partially covering the bear. 

“Noooo,” the girl laughed and lunged for her toy. Erik wheezed as she dug one knee in under his ribs while reaching for it. She seemed to be made entirely of knees and elbows, and all of them managed to bruise Erik somewhere as she clambered over him and tugged at the blankets in her rescue attempt. 

“I said to come down for dinner, not try to smother my child,” a dry voice broke across Wanda’s laughter. 

Erik narrowly avoided being head-butted as he surrendered the bear into Wanda’s waiting hands. Crowing in victory, she wiggled over him off the bed and fled to the door and the safety of her mother’s legs, peering around them to see if he was chasing her (and stopping, disappointed, when she saw he had stayed where he was). 

Absently, Magda reached down to ruffle Wanda’s hair, and then shooed her off toward the stairs. The girl went reluctantly, glancing back over her shoulder at them both repeatedly. 

“Well, she seems to have taken to you,” Magda said brusquely as she came into the room, “Can’t say I know why. You’d give me nightmares, Lehnsherr.” She flung the curtains open the rest of the way to let in more of the late afternoon sunlight. It didn’t sting his eyes, but Erik blinked at it owlishly regardless, feeling sluggish from sleeping all day in defiance of his usual habits. 

“Why did you let me sleep for so long?” He sat up and pushed his hands through his short hair, before stifling a yawn. His head felt too heavy, crammed full of concrete like the aftermath of a long night of drinking. How had Charles become addicted to this? He needed a shower, felt grimy with serum withdrawal and too much sleep and the lingering feeling of Charles on his skin. That last was all in his head, he knew; Charles had made a point to touch him as little as possible, and there was no way to scrub him out of his thoughts. 

Magda had been rummaging in his small bag as he shifted and sat up. Now, she looked at him sidelong, something uncomfortably like pity on her face. “Because you looked like you needed it.”

Erik looked out the window, away from her, over the mundane expanse of her back yard.

She tossed a shirt and pair of pants at him. “Come on, get dressed. You don’t want to stand between a teenage boy and his food.”

*

He slept on the couch the next night, or tried to. Without the heaviness of the drug withdrawal to drag him down into dreamless sleep, the walls felt too close and claustrophobic around him. After being caged for so long, open spaces still set him on edge—too many unguarded directions from which an enemy could approach, attack—but at least he could breathe. Indoors, he was aware of the weight of the building around him, and hazy on the edge of consciousness as he was, the walls kept slipping into blank whiteness whenever he closed his eyes, no matter how much he struggled against the blurring of memory and reality. Half-aware that he was dreaming, Erik tried to wake himself up, but his body felt too heavy; every time he thought he had succeeded, believed he had opened his eyes and was seeing Magda’s living room, the image would shift dizzyingly around him, returning to depthless white walls. He thought he heard Charles’s voice, _calm your mind; Erik, you must calm your mind,_ but it was fading and distant, and Erik tried to reach for him—

—he snapped awake again, properly this time, to a quiet house, no noise but the pictures rattling slightly on the walls at the burst of his power. No Charles, not that Erik would be able to tell if he’d been in his head, meddling. For the first time since Washington, Erik missed his helmet. 

He sat up, rubbed his hands over his face, and stretched out his power toward Magda’s coffee maker. He didn’t much want to sleep again, and would need the caffeine to stay awake. He rested his head on the back of the sofa, and was drowsily rifling through the cupboards for the tin of coffee grounds when he heard soft footsteps on the stairs. 

When he opened his eyes, Wanda was there, halfway down the stairs with her bear tucked under her arm, rubbing one small fist against her reddened eyes. She sniffled when she saw Erik and hurried down the last few stairs. He started to get up, but froze, stunned, when she climbed into his lap and buried her head in his chest. He was frozen, acutely aware of how out of his depth he was as she snuffled into his t-shirt, one hand balled into the fabric. The buttons of the bear’s eyes dug into his skin, but he didn’t dare move it or her. 

“We should go get Magda,” he said eventually, when she didn’t show any signs of calming down. 

“‘s a monster,” she mumbled, breath hitching. 

“Come on, let’s get your mother,” he said, carefully wrapping one arm around her back and standing. 

She shook her head furiously and held on tighter. “Make it go ‘way.”

 _“Liebling,”_ he sighed and carried her up the stairs to her room, rubbing her back awkwardly when she whimpered. “There’s no—” but no. That hadn’t worked when he was a child either; it certainly wouldn’t work now that he was very familiar with the monsters in this world. “Why do you want me to make it go away and not your mother?”

Finally, Wanda lifted her head from where she’d burrowed into his neck and looked tearfully up at him. “Because you’re scary, too.”

He blinked at her when she pushed at his cheeks to try to get him to bare his teeth. She looked up at him with such trusting eyes, confident in his ability to terrify, to drive evil away. How Charles would laugh to see him now. That is, if he didn’t try to pry the child from Erik’s blood-stained hands first. Heart heavy, he obligingly offered her the toothy smile she seemed to want. Her lower lip wobbled, and for a panicked second he was certain she would start to cry again because of him. But instead she pressed her face into his shoulder again, rubbing her runny nose against his shirt, and pointed toward the stairs. 

The little girl was so light as to feel almost insubstantial in his arms, which made him all the more aware of the heaviness of her unconditional trust. Her arms tightened around her neck as he stepped into her room, and her whimper was nearly inaudible. He held her closer in turn, not setting her down as he checked the closets, behind the door, and under her bed, all under the close supervision of Wanda and her bear. He even looked under her pillows as he got her tucked in again, just to be safe (and to make her giggle). 

When he started to pull away, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. “I love you,” she told him with the guileless seriousness that only children seemed to be capable of, before curling up in a tiny ball under the covers. 

Aware that he was the only monster lurking in the shadows of the room, Erik carefully tucked the bear in as well, watching Wanda as her breathing deepened and evened out. 

_“Schlaf gut, Liebchen.”_

*

Magda found him sitting on the back step a few hours later, his face in his hands. He’d made coffee, but it was sitting cold and forgotten at his feet. She nudged his shoulder with her leg as she passed, and then handed him a tumbler of scotch. After a moment’s consideration, and seeing how quickly he knocked the drink back, she handed him her glass as well. His abandoned mug of cold coffee wasn’t much of a substitute at this time of the morning, but since she was awake anyway, it would do.

She leaned back on the step, watching him. He was slumped forward tiredly, fingers only loosely clutching the glass, so out of place in this quiet little corner of the suburbs. She had wondered, after seeing him play with Wanda that evening, if he really meant all his anti-human rhetoric. When she’d peeked around the bedroom door to see him peering ostentatiously under her small bed while Wanda clung nervously to his shoulder, she’d even thought about asking him to stay. Maybe it was because she wasn’t much older than Anya had been, but Erik was...easier with Wanda than he was Peter, who was stiff and standoffish with him too; still, she thought they might be good for each other in the long run. 

Dangerous, late-night thoughts that would look foolish come the morning. 

Thinking better of her earlier generosity, she took her drink back from him. “So, are you going to tell me why you came back here?” 

When he didn’t answer right away, she got up to fetch the rest of the bottle. He raised a sardonic eyebrow at her, but didn’t say no when she refilled his empty glass. 

“Call it…a fundamental difference in philosophy,” he said finally, when it became clear she was willing to wait him out. 

Having seen some of that philosophical difference played out on the national news, Magda was not impressed with his vague bullshit. “I guess genocide just isn’t one of those things you can compromise on.”

That made him angry, as she’d expected it to. He frightened her, sometimes, when he was angry, but she kept her expression impassive as the chains on the swing set rattled and her back fence started to curl inward, menacingly. “Do you know what Trask and his associates did to mutants, Magda? What the president was willing to sign off on? He _butchered_ them, colleagues of mine, students of Charles’s.” He didn’t look at her, didn’t yell, but the streetlights started to flicker, and she could hear the creak of cars on the street. “If you think one gesture on Raven’s part will erase all their fear and prejudice and keep your _son_ safe—”

“I have a daughter too, Erik,” she cut across him. “A human daughter. So don’t you dare come into my house and play with my children and think that she’s somehow _lesser than_ —” she broke off. “I know you’re angry. I’m glad you’re angry, Erik; I don’t want Peter to have to grow up in the kind of world you grew up in. Maybe the past few months will mean that things will change, now that the government can’t sweep experiments like Trask’s under the rug. I hope they do change. But don’t ask me to sacrifice myself, or Wanda’s future, for your brave new mutant utopia.” She looked at him sidelong. “I’ll smother you in your sleep first.”

He didn’t smile, and his jaw remained tightly set, but the fence slowly uncurled back into its former position. Magda didn’t expect that a single outburst from her would do much to change his outlook; all the same, she wished she knew what he was thinking. He was so tightly-wound, preemptively angry at the world and everyone in it for everything that he had lost, and the fear that others like him would endure similar losses. She wasn’t unsympathetic to that fear, but she couldn’t understand what it was he chose to do with it. Provoking another war would only mean more loss. 

It was more than a simple argument over the best course of action for mutant rights that had led him back to her doorstep, she knew; what might have happened to make Erik so upset, what had been done that this Professor Xavier would throw him out again when he had welcomed Erik back after an attempted assassination of the president, she was not sure she wanted to find out. 

“It will be the end of the school year soon,” she said instead, deciding to change tack. She eyed her remaining scotch for a moment, then tipped it into is cold coffee. Waste not. “I’ll have to let the school know if Peter will be reenrolling for the fall.” 

“Charles isn’t going to reopen the school. Charles has probably already crawled back into a bottle, since he doesn’t give half a damn what happens to children like Peter.” Overhead, the porch light flared on, brightened impossibly, until the bulb burnt out with an audible _pop_. 

Unperturbed, she stayed where she was on the back step in the darkness, sipping at her coffee. “Is that what you fought about? The school?”

“No, we didn’t fight. Not seriously.” 

“Mmm-hmm,” she hummed dubiously, then inclined her head pointedly toward the extinguished light.

With a sigh, Erik got up and walked into the house, returning after a moment with a mug of fresh coffee in one hand and a new lightbulb in the other. Magda tilted her head back to watch as he unscrewed the burnt-out bulb with nothing but his mind, enjoying the small display of his talent as much as she had when she’d been little more than a teenager. 

“So, if you two weren’t fighting again, then why are you here?”

The light flickered briefly on, and then off again with a curt wave of Erik’s hand. Magda blinked at the spots of light dancing before her eyes, trying to make out his expression.

“Charles enjoys his martyr complex rather too much to be so direct as to throw me out,” Erik said, his voice harder. “He made it impossible for me to stay; I let him preserve his blameless self-image by leaving.” 

Privately, Magda suspected it was rather more complex than that, but she held her tongue as he sat down next to her again. “If you two disagree so much, why bother asking him to help? Found your own school.”

Though she hadn’t meant it as a joke, Erik laughed sharply, as if genuinely amused by the suggestion. “I’m sure the CIA would be thrilled to find out I was recruiting again. I’d find myself in an even deeper hole than the one they threw me into last time.”

“I didn’t mean go flying around the country in your cape and helmet,” she replied, smirking as he sat down next to her again. “They’re a little...obvious. And not just because of the purple.”

The jibe didn’t win her even the barest hint of a smile. “Even if I weren’t featured prominently on the wanted list of most countries at the moment, do you imagine any parent would entrust their child to me?” He shook his head. “It was Charles who convinced the few mutants we found before: respectable, wealthy, well-educated Charles. Would you trust me to teach Peter?”

“Of course,” Magda replied, and continued over his disbelieving scoff, “You would do it better than I could. Erik, the only reason I managed with Peter as well as I did was because I knew you were different. But I was still terrified, and...” she glanced back up at the house and lowered her voice. “And he knew it. All I could tell him was to keep his head down, try to blend in...and he ran wild instead. So yes, Erik, I would trust you to teach him, because I’m so afraid of the day he does something he can’t run or talk his way out of.”

Still, he shook his head, scornful. “I never had any intentions of shaping young minds for the future, Magda. Charles was the naïve idealist—when we recruited those mutants, I wanted exactly that: recruits. Charles is the one who wanted to make them students, instead of training them how to use their mutations to stay alive.”

“Does it have to be one or the other? They’re children, Erik, not soldiers. You can teach them about their powers without weaponizing them,” Magda said, exasperated by his determination to see everything in black and white. 

“I was willing to defend Charles’s dream, even if he wouldn’t,” Erik snapped. “A school will be a target for every human government who wants to exploit or eradicate mutants. There’s no point in making that target if there isn’t anyone to fight for it.”

“There’s little point in fighting for those kids when they’d still have nowhere to go. Not every kid grew up in Auschwitz, Erik, but they didn’t all grow up in mansions, either. You think Peter’s life has been easy? Or any of the mutant students who followed the two of you?” 

She set her mug down hard on the step and rubbed her hands over her eyes. She couldn’t stop thinking of Peter at thirteen, his hair suddenly changing from its perfectly unremarkable blonde to silver almost overnight. How he had gone silent and sullen around her, dodging her questions and keeping his distance. He’d cried a lot in his room when the children at school had teased him, though he’d tried so hard not to let her hear. It hadn’t mattered to him then what his father could do, because he didn’t feel _special_ and his father wasn’t there. He’d managed to keep the speed a secret, for how long she wasn’t sure: she’d noticed the new and frequent bruises on his arms and legs, but he had always been a bit ungainly and puberty had made it worse, and she was trying to juggle her job with a colicky baby Wanda and just...had never made the time to ask. It wasn’t until the police had first shown up on her doorstep that she’d finally learned the truth from him. 

“You’re a coward,” she told Erik flatly, furious that there were other children like Peter who didn’t know they weren’t alone. Furious that, for all their rhetoric and neither Erik nor Charles seemed to care. They would circle each other like caged animals, taking swipes at each other over means and results, and completely forget about those who needed them to act. “You make the bold, violent gestures because it’s easy, because they isolate you from everyone, but when it comes to the hard, unglamorous work that might actually _help_ , you invent all the reasons in the world not to do it. Damn you. _Feigling_.” She surged to her feet, accidentally knocking over her mug. It rolled off the end of the step and shattered on the path. 

Erik started to stand as well, but she shook her head and quickly stepped back to put more distance between them. “I’m going back to bed. You can walk out on us too, since that seems to be the way you solve all your problems. How has that worked out for you, Erik?”

She took a vicious pleasure in his stricken expression—so, Erik Lehnsherr did have feelings after all, like any other mere human—but didn’t wait for a response. She turned back to the house and let the screen door slam behind her, leaving him and the broken shards of ceramic outside, and for once not giving a damn what the kids or her neighbours might think.

*

The day that Erik left, Charles woke up at a respectable 8:00 in the morning. After realizing that he and Hank were alone in the house again, he got out of bed, had a shower, and went downstairs for breakfast and his first cuppa of the day.

When Hank came dashing into the kitchen at 9:00, bristling blue and frantic that Erik had missed his morning serum dose, Charles had him sit down and have something to eat. With some judicious obfuscation of details, he reassured Hank that everything was fine. Erik was gone, but everything was fine. 

He was fine.

He spent the morning in Hank’s laboratory, if only to keep him from fussing quite so much. He really had neglected the excellent research Hank had been doing for the past weeks and for years before that. It had been a while since he’d stretched his mind in ways outside of his telepathy, too, and it was a genuine pleasure to read the papers Hank had published and take his recommendations for additional articles he really ought to read if he ever hoped to get himself up to speed again. If Hank spoke a little more gently to him, or fussed more than usual, Charles opted not to acknowledge it.

In the afternoon, the new gardening tools Charles had ordered from the store in town arrived, but that was all right; Erik wasn’t the only person who could do upkeep around the house. Balancing a trowel and pair of gardening gloves on his lap, Charles wheeled himself down a path to the gardens that had not yet been tended to. The beds had started to merge into the surrounding lawn—also mostly weeds—and the plants themselves were looking a bit bedraggled. He wished he’d brought the shears out with him too. Well, there was always tomorrow. He wasn’t going anywhere. 

Carefully, Charles levered himself out of his chair down onto the grass next to one of the flower beds. Mindful of the bandages he’d let Hank reapply over breakfast, he tugged the gardening gloves on over his hands and grasped the trowel. Botany had never been his forte, but he was certain someone with two PhDs to his name could determine what was and was not a weed. He had a vague idea that he ought to be turning over the soil as well for...some reason. 

It couldn’t be too hard. It was fine. 

By the time the afternoon was fading into evening, he’d almost finished digging out the weeds that had been choking the bougainvillea and tidying the edges of one of the flower beds. The muscles in his arms shook as he wheeled himself back up to the house, but his mind was clear, and he mentally catalogued what else still needed to be done.

He’d made it through a day without once venturing into Cerebro, or dwelling on Erik. So, as he lay in bed with sleep proving elusive, he let his mind drift out just a bit, just to check. It wasn’t an indulgence, he told himself. He had some responsibility to ensure that Erik (and the populace of wherever Erik ended up) was safe. He felt Erik wake up as their minds touched, but the contact had been enough. He quickly pulled back to avoid any detection. 

Bizarrely, he was with the Maximoffs, though Charles wouldn’t have thought Erik had spent enough time with Peter to forge any kind of meaningful connection. Given how different the two of them were, frankly, aphorisms about oil and water and familiarity breeding contempt came to mind. Tentatively, oh-so-cautiously, Charles reached out again, just to see what it was that had drawn the solitary Erik to a house with children. 

He didn’t have to dig; the answer was at the forefront of Erik’s mind.

Charles’s eyes flew open in surprise, his breath catching in his throat. It took rather a lot of effort to surprise a telepath. Unsurprisingly, Erik managed it better than anyone else. His son. Peter was his _son._

He didn’t push any further—whatever Erik’s feelings for Magda and his family, they were absolutely none of his business. He was safe, which was all Charles had wanted to know. 

Everything was fine.

*

Days bled past. He and Magda barely spoke. Peter spent most of his time in the basement when he wasn’t at school. Only Wanda seemed blissfully unaware of the tension in her home, and continued to cheerfully grab Erik’s hand and tug him from game to game or demand he pick her up and carry her.

Quietly, Erik began to make inquiries. The public humiliation of Trask and the destruction of his prototype sentinels did not mean that his research had been destroyed—to the contrary, the public acknowledgement of mutants would only encourage humans to escalate their fear and hatred. Now that Charles no longer held the end of his leash, Erik saw no need not to ready himself for a renewed attack.

*

In the days after their fight, Magda watched Erik closely. It had taken time for her to relax her guard around him entirely when he’d first washed up on her doorstep again, despite their shared responsibility of Peter, but there was something about Erik that felt oddly inevitable. He was a foregone conclusion in her life; a stray cat that happened to take the form of a handsome, irascible man.

It had taken a while to adjust to his mannerisms, to reconcile her memories with the reality of him. In some ways he was still the man she had known for a brief few weeks in her youth—he was still breathtakingly angry at the world, though now the fury was deep and lasting and internalized, not the same hot flare of rage that had once driven him; he still surprised her with his bursts of humour, still displayed moments of incredible gentleness that tempered the hard, sharp edges of him. But there were the first smatterings of silver in his hair, and he was quieter, more guarded. That he’d spent a large part of his adult life in solitary confinement in prison was clear in his long silences, his wariness in open spaces and around sudden noises, the unguarded flashes of pleasure in his expression at simple things like hot coffee or a tumbler of scotch. 

Given her renewed scrutiny, it very quickly became obvious that he was up to something. Even more obvious was how little his heart was in it: he too easily let himself be distracted by Wanda, or by standing at the kitchen window and looking invariably in the direction of New York and Charles Xavier like a compass needle drawn toward magnetic north. 

Well, that went a ways toward explaining why Erik hadn’t laid a finger on her, even when she had unsubtly indicated that she would welcome the advance. She couldn’t help but wonder if the Professor knew how tied up in knots Erik was over him. Unfortunately, if he was anything like as guarded as Erik was, he probably had no idea. 

She tried to encourage Peter to reach out to him. It was clear that Erik had no idea what to do with him, and the man was in as much need of an anchor as Peter was of a father. She wasn’t sure it worked—after Erik beat Peter’s high score on his video game just by looking at it, she had to endure a week of outraged protests—but Erik stayed, and Peter started to spend more time upstairs. Not in the same room, for the most part, but it was a start. 

When she caught Erik attempting, with thinly-veiled impatience, to teach Peter German, she tried not to feel smug.

*

WHERE ARE OUR MUTANT HEROES NOW? The headline asked above a series of somewhat grainy photos from Paris and DC one morning a few days after Erik left. Charles flipped the newspaper over and did the crossword instead with his morning tea.

PRESIDENT’S SAVIOR SPOTTED IN CHICAGO? It read, a week and a half after Erik left. Hank held the newspaper up as Charles came in from the garden, eyebrows raised. Charles paused for a moment to study the picture, but knew at a glance that it wasn’t Raven. 

At least the house and grounds were coming together. Hank was, unexpectedly, also handy with projects that weren’t complex, technological advancements. Even though the house was still empty and echoing with memories of the past, it was starting to feel more like a home again. 

Two weeks after Erik left, Charles woke to the feeling of a familiar mind approaching the house. He scrambled quickly out of bed, making only the barest of attempts at making himself presentable, and hurried to the front door. 

The war had aged Alex, new fine lines next to his eyes and a shadow on his thoughts, but his smile was as broad as Charles had remembered, and he didn’t hesitate—though his cheeks went pink with embarrassment—when Charles opened his arms for a hug. 

“This is Scott,” he said awkwardly as he stepped back, reaching down to rumple the hair of the very quiet, much younger boy who had hung back a step for their reunion. His eyes were hidden behind thick white bandages, and his shoulders were hunched defensively. 

“I thought...maybe you and Bozo could help him. Like you did with the rest of us.”

The list of names Logan had given him had been short, each one inscribed into Charles’s memory. He hadn’t wanted to make that promise, had wanted even less to keep it, but there was a material difference between a name given to him by a surly Canadian, and a rail-thin and downcast boy on his doorstep. 

And so Charles found himself, for all his protests and resolutions, with his first new student.

*

“You stare out that window a lot,” Peter said unexpectedly at Erik’s shoulder, peering past him. “You casing the joint across the street? No offense, but that’s a pretty steep come-down from your previous criminal activity.”

Erik blinked, dragging his mind back to the present. He hadn’t realized he’d wandered. Ignoring his son’s smirk, he picked up a dish towel and tossed it at him. “Doing the dishes,” he replied blandly. “I’m not surprised the concept is unfamiliar to you.”

“ _Sei kein Arsch._ ”

“ _What_ did you just say?” Magda demanded from behind both of them.

Erik pressed his lips together in an attempt to look stern; Peter frantically started to dry dishes as though he had been too busy to say a word. Magda eyed them both suspiciously, then unceremoniously dropped the final dishes from dinner into the sink. 

“Way to get me in trouble,” Peter hissed under his breath as she walked away. 

“She’s spoken German longer than you have. Your lack of situational awareness is not my problem.”

Peter set the plate he was drying down and hopped up on the counter. “Ok, teach me something else, then. How many languages can you swear in, anyway? Come on. Come onnnnnn,” he dragged the word out, kicking his heels against the cupboard as Erik continued to ignore him. “You teach me how to swear in...in Chinese, or whatever, and I’ll teach you how not to be a dick to your friends. Sound good?”

Erik dropped the last clean plate into the drying rack, looked at Peter pointedly, and walked away.

*

He couldn’t stay—that much was obvious—but he wasn’t sure why he had failed so far to leave. Despite Magda’s hints that he wouldn’t be unwelcome here and his exhaustion with running and hiding, Erik was restless. He filled his time with quietly establishing contacts and scouring the newspaper archives at the library. There were places he could go outside of the United States, places where he had money and contacts.

And yet, instead of moving beyond the very first steps of uncovering the threads of Trask’s activities, instead of recruiting allies or eliminating before they became threats those politicians who had failed to take his warnings to heart, even instead of beginning to so much as gather resources toward those ends, he had…settled into this life. 

Erik stood on the front stoop of Magda’s house, finishing a cigarette and watching as the humans went about their mundane daily lives. It was a humid August day, but the block was out in full force despite the heat, the children apparently impervious as they chased each other around, and their parents watering the gardens or washing their cars. One of the neighbours even raised his hand companionably in Erik’s direction as he climbed into his car. He managed to keep his lip from curling into a sneer, but did not raise his hand in return. 

The peace of the street grated at his nerves in its jarring disconnect from the war he ought to be fighting. This was not for him; it never had been. He needed the anger that had driven him, defined him, for the past two decades: what else was there without it?

A breeze brushed against him, and Erik felt the flicker of metal vanishing from his awareness. When Peter came into view, walking Wanda home from the park, he had a cigarette between his lips and Erik’s lighter in his pocket. 

“Subtle.” Erik glanced quickly around to make sure the neighbours were occupied before he raised one hand and summoned the lighter back. He resented the concealment, but he wasn’t so recently out of the news as to be incautious with his displays. “If you’re going to use your abilities to steal, you should do it in a way that isn’t so easily detected. Now put that out before your mother sees it.” 

The words, though almost rote by now, set his teeth on edge today. It was a cage, one made of warm meals and domesticity and the lie of comfort, but no less a cage than the one at the Pentagon.

“Hypocrite,” Peter muttered, but tossed the pack back to him. 

When Erik didn’t reply, he lapsed into silence. Wanda, unaffected by their mood, skipped ahead of them down the block back to the house. 

Tomorrow, Erik decided. His name had been out of the papers long enough by this point—the existence of mutants was old news by now except for their status in the political arena. He would get everything in order tonight, and would leave first thing in the morning without any messy goodbyes. Argentina first, to get out of the country and make sure his movements weren’t being tracked after all. If they were, he had enough resources there to deal with things quietly. 

“Ground control to Erik, come in Erik.”

Still mulling over the logistics, Erik absently took the envelope from Peter’s hand, but was jarred out of considering the relative merits of a cargo ship to a plane when he saw his name printed neatly on it. Suspicion crawled coldly down his spine, and he hurriedly glanced up and down the street. Nothing looked suspicious, and he was fairly certain the CIA wouldn’t bother to send him a letter if they knew where he was, but one didn’t survive long by assuming the best. 

“Get inside,” he snapped to Peter, reaching out with his powers to take in every car, every pipe, every electrical wire, seeking anomalies. 

“You could maybe open it before you flip out,” Peter grumbled, but he scooped Wanda up and carried her into the house. Erik took one final look up and down the street, which remained drowsily busy with suburban summer activity, before following. 

Once inside, he almost ran into Peter, who had taken his order too literally and had stopped just inside the front door. 

“So, top secret mission? Destroy after reading kinda thing? Oh man, if you had laser powers you could destroy it with your mind. Maybe it’s to let you know about another secret mutant love child of yours, now that your face has been in every newspaper everywhere,” Peter mused. 

The problem with having an incredibly fast son, Erik reflected, was that it was impossible to get away from him. He could feel a headache building. Concentrating on not grinding his teeth, Erik pushed past him. 

There was a puff of air that knocked him forward, and the envelope was suddenly missing from his hand. Before Erik could do more than swear, Peter reappeared and tossed him the opened envelope. 

“Well, that was boring. I was kind of hoping for an invitation to some league of super-villains that I could piggyback on.”

“I doubt that super-villains deal in legacy admissions,” Erik said dryly, snatching the paper, “And tampering with someone’s mail is a federal offense.” 

“You _drop buildings on people_.” Peter drew the words out slowly, as though speaking to a small and especially dull child. 

Ignoring him for the moment, Erik tugged the single sheet of paper out of the envelope and unfolded it. For all the concern it had engendered, it was indeed remarkably anticlimactic. The page was almost entirely blank, in fact. In the top corner was a stylized X in a circle, with the words _Mutatis Mutandis_ framing it. 

“How subtle, Charles,” Erik murmured, brushing his thumb over the crest. 

“So, what does it mean?”

Erik read the brief message again, though he already knew it by heart. 

_I owe you an apology._

He crumpled the note in his fist. “Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything.”

*

It was the beginning of August (and four weeks after Erik left, not that Charles was counting at this point) when a black car rolled up the drive in front of the Xavier mansion. Out in the garden with Scott and the newest addition, Bobby, who were combining their powers marvelously to water the plants (the rhododendrons had been...unfortunate...but all in the name of learning), Charles turned sharply toward the front of the house at the feel of a familiar mind.

A familiar, _furious_ mind. 

“Oh dear,” Charles breathed, but he was already smiling as he left the boys to it and wheeled around to the driveway as a car came screeching up the gravel. 

Moira greeted him with a slap that left Charles’s ears ringing, one that he knew was well deserved. It was followed immediately by a tight hug that, while undoubtedly less merited, was still warmly received. 

“Damn it,” Moira muttered, and rubbed one hand over her face as she pulled back. “I’m still angry at you, Xavier, don’t think you’re off the hook. You’re an _asshole_ for what you did.”

“It’s good to see you, my friend,” Charles said, taking her hands in his own and giving them a gentle squeeze. “I’ve missed you.”

He wouldn’t try to refute her accusations, which were more than fair. He had done what he had felt was necessary for the protection of himself and his fellows at the time, but he did not expect Moira to forgive him for it. 

“Well, whose fault is that?” she snapped, but squeezed his hands back. Under her anger and the sense of disorientation that reverberated through her thoughts as she looked around the property, Charles could feel she was pleased to see him too. 

“I can’t really believe I’m here,” she said, taking in the building, the gardens. “That _this_ is really here. It’s seemed like a dream for so long....”

“Come inside and I’ll put on some tea,” Charles interjected when she fell silent again. “See if we can’t bring you up to speed again.”

Tea turned into dinner turned into brandies in the library. Moira had always been remarkably easy to speak with, her mind sharp and focussed but her conversation warm. 

“I had vague impressions from the start...nothing that was quite a memory,” Moira told him, legs tucked up under her on his couch and working on her third drink. “It tanked my career at the CIA—I was too soft, too emotional, too much of a _woman_.” 

“I’m sorry,” Charles told her. He couldn’t help but feel guilty: Moira’s determination and clarity of purpose had been what had drawn him to her (once he’d been sober enough to see beyond her remarkably pretty face; a first impression that still made him cringe to recall it). In many ways, she reminded him of Erik, though he would never tell her that. He hated that he’d helped to set her back. 

“I found another job,” she said, waving his concern off. “But you could have trusted me, Charles; I’m more angry about that than anything else.”

“I trusted you; it was your employers I didn’t trust, not with so much anti-mutant sentiment.”

Moira snorted and set her glass down on the chess table. “Funny, that sounds like an excuse Erik would give.”

The instinctive protest died unspoken at the look she gave him. Charles subsided, and looked down into his glass. He didn’t want another debate about method like he’d had with Erik. More importantly, he didn’t want to hear how they weren’t so different in this particular instance. He would never argue that the ends justified the means; he was, in fact, entirely ashamed of what he’d done to Moira. That it had likely been necessary—that it had likely been a course of action Erik would have approved of—made him even less willing to have that conversation. He wanted to speak with his friend, not confront any hypocrisy on his part. God knew it had driven enough people he cared about away by now; he wanted to focus on the future as best he could to keep the friendships he still had. 

“In a way, Erik’s the reason that I’m here,” she continued, stretching one foot out to nudge his arm and regain his attention. “Seeing his face on the news, reading his name in the papers...I started to remember more things. Just flashes at first. Fortunately, while my new employer is just as interested in mutants, they were...rather more understanding.”

“Your new employer?”

“Classified,” she returned with a small smile. “This is a personal visit, not a business one. Though on a related note, I hear the CIA is looking for you again. You’re an American hero, Xavier; they want to give you a medal.”

“Ah, well. I think I’ll stay out of DC for a while yet,” Charles demurred. “Raven is the hero; I just have the campaign funding potential.”

“Don’t tell yourself short. This school will change a lot of lives, Charles, more than our idea of the X-Men ever could. And it’s bigger than that: you have a family here.”

The words lingered in his mind long after Moira had retired to one of the guest rooms, leaving Charles alone in the library. 

_You have a family here._

_That sounds like an excuse Erik would give._

He hated that she was right. With Hank and Alex back, and now Scott and Bobby on the grounds, the building was coming to life once more. He knew from experience how fragile this dream of a school, a peaceful place where young mutants could be themselves and be safe, was. And he would do almost anything to protect it. 

God, but he missed Raven. But not just Raven: Angel, and Darwin, and Sean. And Erik, too. He could admit that to himself now, reluctantly. He missed Erik desperately. They’d had a family here once; the first real family many of them had ever had. 

There was still stationery from the first attempt at the Xavier Institute buried in his desk. He rummaged through the drawers until he found a sheet, and scrawled the note quickly. He sealed it in an envelope and rolled down the hall to Moira’s room to slip it under the door. She could post it for him when she left in the morning—before he sobered up enough to think better of it.

*

He hadn’t really expected anything to come from the letter. That had, in fact, been his one comfort once his hangover had receded and mortification had set in. Even if Charles weren’t more naturally gifted with the verbal—with its associated psychic impressions that came with such discourse—than the written, Erik was almost pathologically opposed to persuasion or forgiveness. As such, it was very much to Charles’s surprise that he didn’t even get enough time to forget the knowing look that had been on Moira’s face when she left the estate before he felt the storm of Erik’s mind approaching Westchester, a tangle of exhaustion, irritation, and trepidation.

Charles stared up at his bedroom ceiling for a while, drowsily eavesdropping on Erik’s mind. He was still almost an hour away—Charles’s daily regimen in Cerebro was proving effective in expanding his range—and thinking of how he should be on a plane to Argentina by now. But below that warring sense of what he ought to be doing, even below the pleasurable awareness of the car he was driving and the other vehicles on the road, lurked the sensation of being tugged inexorably onward. 

He didn’t have any idea how this meeting would go—hell, even how he _wanted_ it to go—but a lack of preparedness on his part wouldn’t keep Erik from his door. Charles pushed himself out of bed and got dressed, heading downstairs to put the coffee on. It was a five-hour drive from Washington; Erik would need it. 

As the car came up the drive and Charles wheeled himself into the foyer, he cast his mind out over the house, checking on its other residents. Hank was awake, tinkering away in his lab, but the rest of the house was silent and peaceful. Alex, Scott, and Bobby wouldn’t be awake for another two hours at least: he should have time. 

“We’re here,” Charles heard Erik saying as he opened the door, and another consciousness rose blearily into his awareness. “Wake up, but don’t talk.”

Oh. Now that _was_ a surprise. 

“Good morning, Peter,” Charles greeted the yawning teenager who pulled himself reluctantly out of the car. “You must have been driving all night. There’s coffee on if you’d like some; otherwise, there are more than enough spare rooms for you to have a nap.”

“Don’t talk,” Erik repeated, slamming his door shut.

Charles suppressed a smile. Apparently, even a multi-hour road trip in the middle of the night hadn’t been enough to dampen Peter’s enthusiasm, at least at first. Being in the company of a tired and snarling Erik would take the wind out of anyone’s sails after a few hours. Even now, looking up at the house, the lad couldn’t summon more than an impressed whistle, which was rather spoiled by a yawn partway through. 

“Up the stairs on the right and down the corridor,” Charles said, taking pity on him. “Any rooms with open doors are free. Go get some rest.”

Peter shot a questioning glance in Erik’s direction and received a terse nod in return. Charles could feel the familial tendrils connecting them, still as delicate as a spider’s web. Even knowing now what the connection was between them, it was…strange to be faced with the reality. 

“I’m amazed he can be that quiet, to be honest,” he said, trying for levity. 

“He’s a pain in the ass,” Erik snapped. 

Charles huffed a laugh; he’d said the same thing at first. “Speaking as a geneticist, I’d say that’s hereditary, old friend.”

The endearment made Erik flinch, an expression that was quickly wrestled back into neutrality. He hadn’t moved apart from that nod to his son, one hand pressed against the roof of the car as though remaining connected to the metal would drain some of the tension from his body. Charles tried to reframe his image of Erik, to see him as a father. The father of a teenager, no less, one who was fast and brash and loud in all the ways his father was guarded and watchful but who, for all that, really wasn’t all that different from him. Now, he looked back toward the gate, and once again Charles caught the edges of thoughts of Argentina, of escape. There was little Charles could do if he chose to run, so he made the first move himself, rolling down the driveway toward the car. 

“For God’s sake, Erik,” he said, “stop looking like you’re five seconds from bolting and come inside for a cup of coffee.”

The sharp tone snapped Erik out of his ruminations about how quickly he could make it to the border and into the familiar, irritated need to argue. With an irritated huff of air through his nose, Erik finally stepped away from the security of the car as Charles approached. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, one that had clearly been folded and unfolded, crumpled and smoothed out again. Charles knew exactly what it was. 

“This is not an apology.”

“No, it wasn’t much of one,” Charles admitted.

“It wasn’t one at all, Charles.”

“Come inside,” Charles repeated. “Please.”

He waited for an eternity of seconds, but when Erik didn’t respond beyond raking his eyes searchingly over Charles’s face, he forced himself to smile and turn away. To trust. 

He was halfway back to the door when he heard the crunch of gravel under Erik’s shoes. 

This time, when he reached the small step up into the house, he paused and looked to Erik. After a brief hesitation, his chair lifted and settled in front of the door with exquisite care. The door swung open for him. 

“Thank you,” Charles said, perhaps more gravely than the small display of power warranted, but the situation was more than the sum of its gestures. He smiled, much to Erik’s consternation, and wheeled himself down the hallway. It was tempting to go to the library, to have this conversation however it would go surrounded by echoes of happier times, but Charles turned toward the kitchen instead. It was safer, neutral territory. As Erik followed him, Charles reached out lightly to touch Hank’s mind and appraise him of the situation. It was better to know they’d temporarily have some privacy than to risk interruption; moreover, knowing that their privacy was finite would force Charles to be direct. 

Charles put the kettle on for himself and poured Erik a cup of coffee, temporizing as, behind him, he heard Erik slump into a kitchen chair, irritation dispersing into sparkles of exhaustion. Even before the long drive and questions from Peter that he didn’t want to answer, Erik hadn’t been sleeping well. Of course not—he wouldn’t, not indoors. Magda’s house didn’t have discreet balconies, after all. 

“You’re starting the school again,” Erik noted, the letter spread out under his hand on the table. Charles handed him his mug of coffee: an olive branch of sorts. 

“Admittedly, the stationery is left over from my last attempt, but...yes. It would appear so. I’ve even managed to scrounge up a handful of students, quite despite my best intentions.”

Erik rubbed one hand over his face and exhaled hard. “Good. When Peter wakes up, he can call his mother, let her know he’ll be staying.”

Tempting to take the coward’s way out, avoid inciting a fight by taking refuge in empty conversational niceties. Charles envied Erik’s ability to apologize without hesitation or apparent shame. He had a harder time finding words to express his remorse when his own actions still made his stomach twist. 

He screwed his courage to the sticking place. “I’m sorry, Erik.”

No recriminations were forthcoming. Studiously casual, Erik leaned back in his chair and took a sip of his coffee. “No need: you’ve reopened the school, Peter will have someone to keep him in line, and Magda won’t hunt me down. I didn’t expect more than that.”

His words were clipped, but his expression remained impassive. Charles had the uncomfortable feeling they were having two entirely separate conversations. Yes, they’d fought about Charles’s refusal to reopen the academy at some length, but that was hardly the most contentious subject between them. He resolutely kept his telepathy furled in on itself, resisting the impulse to brush against Erik’s mind and see what it was he was missing. 

“Erik,” Charles said slowly, “I _attacked_ you. That’s what—I’m sorry; I’m so sorry.”

Erik blinked, then frowned. “Attacked,” he repeated. “You run the risk of melodrama, Charles.”

That odd dissonance again, between the recriminations that had plagued Charles’s imagination and the reality of Erik’s bland response. He scrambled to find his conversational footing. “But...isn’t that why you left?”

Already guarded, Erik’s expression shuttered entirely. “No,” he said flatly. “Remarkably, Charles, the world does not revolve around you.”

Sarcasm: Erik’s standard defense mechanism. The rigid lines of his posture spoke of how little he wanted to have this conversation. It wouldn’t take much to goad him, Charles knew; a few well-aimed remarks would force everything into the open, and at volume. It was a conversational ouroboros: he wondered how their future selves had ever managed to break free of the pattern. 

He took a deep breath, and spread his hands. “Would you be honest with me? We have little enough to lose, I think.”

“Why do you need an explanation, Charles? You made it abundantly clear this situation was temporary.” Despite his words, Erik leaned forward, arms folded on the table. “When you pulled me into that dream, I thought your disgust for me might have abated. It was—But then we came out of it, and you didn’t want to look at me, didn’t want me to touch you.” He shrugged, the movement tight and controlled. His smile was horrible. “Whoever you wanted in your bed, it wasn’t _me_ , and I was tired of fighting that one-sided battle.”

For a moment, Charles couldn’t breathe past the weight on his chest. He knew he had hurt Erik, but not that his hurt would be for all the wrong reasons. 

“I was disgusted with _myself_ ,” Charles explained when he could trust his voice again, choosing his words with care. “Am disgusted. And yes, I was angry at you for being so...cavalier, I suppose, but that was no excuse for me to use my powers against you.”

“Is that what you’ve been flagellating yourself for,” Erik said, still wary. “Far be it for me to discourage a mutant from using his abilities, Charles. I thought I’d made it clear I was enjoying myself—I would have stopped you otherwise.”

Charles just looked at him helplessly, and Erik’s expression shifted, became thoughtful. “You’re saying I wouldn’t have been able to stop you.”

“I’m sorry, Erik.”

He shook his head, refusing to accept Charles’s words. “You were in my head. You could feel everything I was feeling. And you’re telling me that if I’d...fought back, or been frightened, that you wouldn’t have stopped? I don’t believe you, Charles.”

“Well, maybe I’m not the man you think I am!” Charles yelled, voicing his own fear. No, Erik hadn’t tried to fight him off—in fact, his whole mind had been alight with pleasure—but the dark potential inherent in his own abilities terrified him. How could he trust that Erik’s enjoyment hadn’t been dictated by his mind as well as a salve to his conscience? He could read everyone intentions but his own, and the not knowing was what was most frightening.

“You’re exactly the man I think you are; that’s the problem.” Erik sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Not that I agree there’s a need, but are you asking for my forgiveness?” There was an edge to his voice: forgiveness was a fraught concept between them. 

Charles knew it was selfish, knew that he was not yet able to extend the same wholeheartedly to Erik. “Yes.”

“Fine. You have it.”

As if it was easy. As if Charles were foolish for having to ask. There was such confidence in Erik’s voice that for a moment Charles couldn’t speak. He cleared his throat and nodded. “Thank you.”

“Are we done, then?” 

“If you like,” Charles said, as evenly as he could. In some ways he didn’t think he and Erik would ever truly be done, but they could at least part, if not as friends, then not precisely as enemies. “Will you say goodbye to Peter before you go?”

Despite his friendly tone, Charles knew it wasn’t exactly a kind suggestion. Erik’s expression hardened at the reminder, the recognition Charles forced of his responsibility. He’d always fought so hard to be independent, but it was out of fear rather than a desire for solitude. No matter how little time they’d spent together, how much Erik might chafe at their connection, Charles did not intend to let the child feel abandoned by Erik. He did not intend to let Erik willfully shoulder the guilt of another family lost. 

They parted at the stairs. Charles went to have a quiet word with Hank and to check on the other children, still soundly sleeping. With that done, he made himself another cup of tea and wheeled out onto the back terrace. It was out of the way, if Erik wished to avoid a protracted goodbye—Charles himself was rubbish at them—and it was a pleasant place to sit. The boys had been working hard, if in a somewhat disorganized fashion, to bring the estate back to its former glory. The lawns were mown now, the hedges trimmed back, and the flowers outnumbering the weeds for a change. It wouldn’t last, not once term started properly, but it was nice to see the eagerness with which they approached the task, the pride that they took in their home. 

Though he kept his mental distance, Charles felt the bright intensity of Erik’s mind moving through the house, pausing intermittently at old haunts. He turned the scarred metal helmet he’d retrieved from Hank’s laboratory over in his hands, then took another sip of his tea. Eventually, the door opened behind him. 

“How’s Peter?”

“Already snoring again, I’d expect,” Erik replied. His eyes flicked to the helmet in Charles’s lap, but he didn’t inquire.

“He’ll be well looked after here with other mutants his age. He won’t grow up feeling alone.” _Not like us._

Erik rested his arms on the stone balustrade and scowled in the direction of the satellite dish. Abandoning his tea on the table, Charles moved over next to him, remembering the last time they’d stood together here, minds entangled. He wondered if Erik was also thinking of that afternoon, the elation of their mental connection and the sheer power it had engendered. Their final afternoon of being happy together, as it turned out. He twisted his fingers together in his lap. 

Whatever Erik was thinking that made his mind burn against Charles’s telepathy, he kept it to himself. “You’ve taken up gardening, I see.”

“You gave me cause to remember that a home isn’t just a building, it’s what we make of it. The boys were a little too enthusiastic around the rhododendrons, but no real harm done; they’ll grow back.”

“Pity.”

“Quite. They were my mother’s prized possessions,” Charles replied absently, more preoccupied with looking at Erik, memorizing him, than he was with their bickering. The response felt rote, automatic, reaching for the nostalgia of every other petty disagreement they’d had here. “Perhaps in their place I could have a memorial constructed, for those who have been lost.” Feeling Erik’s mind draw sharply in on itself, he continued, “If you’d permit it.”

Erik snorted. “You’re asking me for my permission? How novel.”

His hands were white-knuckled on the edge of the balustrade, the only outward sign of his agitation. Charles was strangely transfixed by them, broad and scarred and long-fingered. The hands of a killer, a monster, a friend. He bit his lower lip hard. 

“You knew Emma and the others better than I did. It seemed…more respectful, to ask.”

“There’s nothing respectful about building a memorial for people who died for a cause you disdain.”

“That’s a failure of empathy, Erik. I don’t agree—will never agree—with the methods of your Brotherhood of Mutants, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still be horrified and saddened by what was done to its members.” He reached up to set Erik’s helmet on the stone between them. Despite the warmth of the morning, the metal still felt cold and alien under his fingertips, unwelcoming. 

It was clear that Erik didn’t agree. He shook his head and summoned his helmet the last few inches into his hands. The gesture was curt, but his touch surprisingly careful over the scarred and pitted surface. “And what with all your empathy will you teach your students about them, Charles?” _What will you teach my son about me?_

“I hope to show them another path—a better path. But what I will teach them is that just because someone loses their way—” Charles paused, the words catching in his throat. “No one is beyond forgiveness, no matter how far they feel they are from home.”

Erik looked down at his hands for a moment, then turned to face Charles. He felt the moment their eyes met, the weight of his words and everything that still lay unspoken between them. In that instant, he thought he could see the beginnings of a pathway out of this wreckage of their friendship and hopes. Only for a moment, before Erik’s lips thinned and he turned away again. Charles watched him turn the helmet around in his hands and tried to hold back his instinctive revulsion for it. So much pain and loss embodied in such a simple object. 

“If you believe so strongly that I’m wrong, why would you give this to me?” Erik asked, without raising his eyes from the metal. 

“Because it belongs to you,” Charles replied simply. “My feelings about it aren’t important.”

Erik’s snort was eloquently disbelieving. Charles had to concede the point. 

“When you first put it on, Erik...it was utterly hypocritical of you to stand there preaching mutant pride while denying me the right to my own abilities. I had never given you a reason not to trust me before that, but because I’m a telepath, you treated me the same way you accuse humans of treating us all: with suspicion and fear.”

That made Erik look at him again finally, as Charles had suspected it would. “Was I wrong?” he demanded. “You wouldn’t have tried to—”

“Let me finish, please,” Charles interrupted him. He reached up and touched the helmet, surprised when Erik relinquished it into his grasp without a fight. “I have since given you cause to use this, and for that I am sorry. I wish I could promise you that I never will again. I hope I don’t have to.”

“That sounds like a threat, Charles,” Erik said mildly. “You won’t have to use that mind of yours if I play nicely with the humans, is that it?”

I wasn’t what Charles had meant to convey, but it was the truth as Erik saw it, and perhaps he wasn’t entirely wrong. Charles folded his hands together in his lap and closed his eyes briefly. How could Erik trust him if he didn’t promise not to interfere? How could he make a promise he knew he would have to break?

There was a crunch of gravel as Erik knelt down in front of him, and a hum of power through the metal when, after a moment’s pause, Erik braced his hands on the arms of the wheelchair. Charles opened his eyes. 

“If I do that, give in now, you’ll merely get more names on that memorial you want, Charles. They aren’t going to stop.” 

“The world keeps moving forward, my friend. We will see equality for mutants come, just as it has for others. It wasn’t that long ago that ‘segregation now, segregation forever’ was the law of the land. Have faith.” It was a struggle not to touch Erik’s cheek, or run his hands through his short hair. Charles settled for putting one hand over his on the arm of his chair. 

“Just because I don’t agree with senseless violence doesn’t mean I will stand by and do nothing,” he continued when Erik didn’t respond. “I didn’t know what was happening when it was Angel and Sean and the others. I’d just lost my sister, my legs, my—” Charles’s voice cracked, and he shook his head. “You can tell me that I should have fought harder, Erik, because maybe you would have done it differently, because everything is a fight for you—but it hurt. Losing the school was the last straw.” He felt Erik’s hand ball into a fist under his own, and he squeezed it gently. “I know better now. Have some faith, in me if not in them.”

Erik’s jaw was clenched tight, and Charles could feel the anger and arguments tangling in his thoughts. But instead of the tirade Charles expected, Erik simply asked, “And if they hurt you?”

It was unexpected enough that Charles huffed a laugh. “Well, then I’ll be terribly miffed if you didn’t go on a murderous rampage to avenge me. No, Erik, don’t—” Charles cupped his face in his hands when Erik started to pull away. “I’m sorry; I know it isn’t a joke.” 

Erik went entirely still at the touch of Charles’s hands on his cheeks. “Charles....” 

Mindful of Erik’s accusation earlier— _you didn’t want to look at me, didn’t want me to touch you_ —Charles didn’t pull away. 

“We survived the sentinels,” he said at last, hearing the hoarseness in his voice. “So did Peter, if Logan is to be believed. We can survive a few bloviating politicians. And I’m afraid if Peter wishes to enroll, you’ll need to be here to terrify him into line.”

At that, Erik did sit back, causing Charles’s hands to fall from his face. 

“You want me to stay.” His tone was flat with incredulity. 

Charles’s heart had been broken by Erik more than he cared to think—for his betrayal and abandonment, for the violence into which he’d indoctrinated Raven—but it was that note of doubt in his voice that almost undid him entirely.

“I can’t pretend I don’t disagree with your methods, but we…” he rubbed one hand over his face, trying to smile. “Well. We want the same things, ultimately, don’t we.”

“I won’t change, Charles; not even for you.” Erik said it harshly, but it was as much a plea as it was a warning. If Charles went into this blindly, naively, they would only tear each other apart again. It hurt not to hear an immediate “yes,” for the answer not to be as simple as that. Erik was not going to change, and Charles did not yet know if he could see his way to forgiving him for that. All he had were his assurances that patience would see them through, assurances that were so small and shabby when held against years of bitterness. 

But there was also a glimpse of a future where a tall, iron-haired man stood silently at his side, ready to face the end of the world together. 

“I know.”

Erik looked down, squeezing his eyes shut. Nothing with Erik would ever be easy, but Charles could feel his longing to rest at war with his sense of obligation. It wasn’t enough that he wanted to stay. It wasn’t enough that Charles wanted him to. 

Charles gave in to the temptation to touch, and brushed his fingers lightly through his short hair, before putting his helmet on for him.

Erik jerked his head up in surprise, his eyes reddened. “What are you—?”

“This thing is utterly ridiculous, you know,” Charles said with a small, crooked smile. “But I don’t want you ever to be able to doubt that this is your decision, so wear it, just for a moment, please.” Reluctantly he let his hands drop. “I am not going to pretend it will be easy, or that we won’t spend more time arguing than anything else. But we’ve already lost ten years, Erik. I don’t want to wait another fifty before we get this right. Don’t—don’t answer me right now; I’d rather you think it over. But I want you to stay, Erik. This is your home.”

It was difficult to back away and leave him adrift and kneeling on the terrace, but Charles forced himself to give him the space. He knew he would not be able to face a “no” with equanimity until he’d had some time to regain his composure, and if he were giving Erik the choice, he owed it to him to accept any answer. 

Even so, it still hurt that Erik didn’t follow him immediately.

*

The massive satellite dish still faced the mansion, ten years later. Lying on the grass beneath it, Erik wondered if it was lack of ability or lack of interest that had kept it it twisted off true for a decade. Likely a combination of both, he decided, but he had no intention of fixing it, even though it would now be easy for him. The metal hummed audibly as he poured his restlessness and frustration, his anger into it, but it only seemed to amplify rather than bleed off the emotions.

The helmet was growing uncomfortable under the heat of the morning sun, but he didn’t dare take it off. 

He could have been halfway back to Washington by now. 

Erik closed his eyes and breathed in the fresh green scent of the grass as he sent tendrils of his power deep down into the earth and along the edges of the satellite. He was angry, the hot heavy weight of it pressing down on his ribs, making it hard to breathe. That Charles would turn him loose without a fight, hand over Erik’s helmet with a vague warning about behaving himself—it was the kind of superficially amicable dismissal he reserved for CIA agents or misbehaving school children. After Erik had fought so hard to stay, had reined in his temper and permitted himself to be leashed by Charles’s drugs, had pushed back against his crushing indifference, it was a mockery. 

Above him, the satellite dish creaked alarmingly. 

Erik opened his eyes. 

_I want you to stay, Erik. This is your home._

It had been exactly what he’d wanted to hear ten years ago, on a sun- and blood-drenched beach. He had a history of following where Charles lead him when he was asked, wanted. It made him suspicious now. 

_I’d rather you think it over._

Why bother, when he knew Erik would come the moment he called, unless he wanted any separation going forward to be Erik’s fault? Why else would he ask Erik to stay but tell him he could leave? He always had been a manipulative bastard; that’s what came of being able to see into everyone’s thoughts. 

He wasn’t certain he dared hope that it was, simply, that Charles had finally started to trust him again. 

Insects buzzed carelessly by him, lazy bees floating heavily from one dandelion to the next. Charles had sat out here next to him once, hands transcribing elaborate shapes of their future in the air. As always, he’d been dressed as the poorest rich man Erik knew, wearing his ridiculously impractical gloves with the fingers cut off. 

“I think I had those gloves once. In Auschwitz,” Erik had said, deadpan, and Charles had frozen in such a comical agony of not knowing how to apologize that he hadn’t been able to keep himself from laughing outright. Charles had bowled him over, a pint-sized whirlwind of outrage, swearing at him as he pummeled Erik’s chest. He’d tasted so sweet when Erik had surrendered for the price of a kiss, his scratchy wool gloves cupping Erik’s cheeks. 

He breathed in deeply, fingers flexing against the grass. His cheeks were damp, and he couldn’t centre himself. He hadn’t been able to meditate since his first night here: first his powers taken from him, then his peace of mind overrun with Charles. Maddening, for a man who had proudly defined himself by his solitude for so long, to find another sharing his every breath and thought, curling up under his ribs and insinuating himself under Erik’s skin. He should resent it. Of all the things Shaw had taken from him—his homeland; his family; his flesh pierced and cut and laid open for his experiments; even the abilities by which Erik had forged his life—he had never been able to touch Erik’s mind. It was all Erik had that was wholly _his_ , and Charles had snuck in somehow and made a home there. 

The sun tracked across the sky; the shadow of the satellite shifted over the grass. He should leave. If he’d pushed his car to its limits, he could have been to the Canadian border by now. They had too many enemies for him to stay. He could be a shield for Charles, for this school. Erik had taken so much from him; he could defend this fragile dream. Leaving didn’t have to mean more than that. 

Perhaps Charles’s epistolary abilities would improve with practice. 

The years stretched out in his mind’s eye, the distance and solitude of a one-man war. Years of drifting, without anything like a hope beyond circumspect words on scraps of paper. 

It felt heavy.

*

It wasn’t long before the children were awake and the duties of running this proto-school had to occupy his attention. Charles spoke with Peter when he emerged, bleary-eyed and strangely quiet, from his room, to confirm that he did indeed want to stay on. He spoke with Magda on the phone, at first to ensure Erik hadn’t made a unilateral decision about Peter’s education, and then in a fruitless attempt to recruit her as another teacher.

There was a long, argumentative conversation to be had with Moira as, while accepting a medal felt somewhat hypocritical to him, it would be useful to have the political protection. There were forms to file and hoops to jump through to have the academy accredited once more and, with September looming, there was a curriculum to plan—his last attempt was now woefully outdated.

And yet Charles lingered over tea in the library, aware of the silence in his thoughts where the storm of Erik’s mind should have been. Even knowing that the helmet would block him, Charles kept reaching, kept probing at that absence for any sign he was still there. 

“Professor?” Hank at the door, long-suffering. “Scott, uh, had an accident with the gazebo.”

“It’s still standing, isn’t it?” Alex, protective, appeared behind Hank and clapped him on the shoulder. “He’s getting better.”

Charles set his cup down and pushed away from the desk. 

The day dragged on.

*

It was still early when Charles turned in for the night. Between the early morning and the day’s emotional upheavals, he didn’t feel quite up to the task of the boisterous family dinner. It was really rather silly: Charles had never held any truck with romantic novels, their pining heroines and the overblown declarations of love from brooding heroes. He didn’t much care to find himself in the position of such a heroine.

The awareness of how pathetic being maudlin over Erik’s silence was didn’t stop him from pausing outside Erik’s empty room, however, nor feeling his heart sink a bit at finding his own room likewise deserted. He rolled across to the balcony doors and looked outside to the grounds. Empty, as far as he could see. He left the curtains open regardless. 

“You’re being utterly ridiculous, Xavier,” he sighed as he settled into bed. Raven’s picture watched him from the side table, and he imagined she would tell him much the same (though in less gentle terms). For once, the thought of her didn’t make his heart clench painfully, and he let himself drift off, looking at her smile. He would reach out to her again in Cerebro tomorrow. There was nothing to be lost from having hope.

*

The brush of another mind against his seemed at first to be part of his dream, a cool blue current through the warm wash of peaceful, unformed colours and sensations. He stirred and opened his eyes a crack, seeing the open balcony door.

“Go back to sleep,” he heard, or told himself, and closed his eyes again.

*

Erik was sleeping in the armchair by the doors.

Charles watched him drowsily for a while, his mind still in the hazy in-between that was neither sleep nor wakefulness. Erik had dragged the chair over to the door and had managed to curl his long limbs up into it somehow, though his head was resting at what looked like rather an uncomfortable angle. 

The helmet was nowhere in sight. 

The sunlight coming in through the glass picked out the silver that was starting to streak Erik’s short hair, and played on the lines around his eyes. Charles wondered how it was he had never noticed them before—why it was that, even after ten years, he still thought of Erik as the young and angry man he had held onto in the Gulf. They were neither of them that young any more. 

Though he was loathe to wake him when Erik seemed so at peace, he couldn’t be terribly comfortable contorted like that. His heart too full to speak aloud, Charles instead gently pressed warm thoughts of welcome in his direction. _Hello._

Slowly, Erik opened his eyes. “Good morning,” he replied, voice sleep-rough. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you awake this early, Charles.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever known you to sleep this late,” Charles replied, giddy. “You’re losing your edge, old man.”

Erik huffed in response, then hissed between his teeth as he straightened in his chair, muscles protesting the awkward positions they’d held all night. “Don’t start,” he warned, rubbing at the crick in his neck. 

_Are you going to stay?_ Charles” wanted to ask, because the absence of the helmet and the light feeling in his chest meant nothing, not if Erik had only come to say goodbye. But he had started to learn patience with Erik; he knew better than to push. The answer would come in time. Instead he asked, “Are you going to come to bed?”

Erik paused in rubbing his neck.

“To sleep, Erik.” Though Charles wanted him close, craved the grounding reassurance of touch— _you’re here, you’re not a dream_ —both of them needed time and space to relearn trust first, to see if their jagged edges could still fit together. There were too many land mines lurking in the subject of intimacy and sex between them to tread incautiously there. “A man of your years can’t sleep in chairs or sleeping bags forever.”

“Maybe in the right bed.” Erik stood and stretched, his spine popping audibly. “Are you offering?”

Charles tugged the blankets back up to his chin and closed his eyes. “You’re letting in a draft.”

He heard Erik’s chuckle, then the soft sound of him moving around the room. It was very tempting to peek to make sure he wasn’t leaving, but Charles willed himself to stillness. Soon enough he felt the mattress dip and, after a moment, Erik’s hand brushing against his. He smiled and turned his hand to thread their fingers together . 

“I trust this isn’t a protracted way of telling me you’re leaving. I’ll be very upset with you if it is.”

“For being the smartest man I know, you’re remarkably stupid sometimes.”

Too comfortable to move, Charles nudged Erik telepathically. “I mean it, Erik. None of this is going to be easy.”

“I didn’t for a moment imagine living with you would be easy,” Erik said, tired and amused.

Charles wanted to shake him. “You aren’t taking this seriously.” He let go of Erik’s hand, shifting to lie on his side. He needed to look him in the eye for this. Better to make things clear now between them than to put off heartbreak. “If it—any of it—ever becomes too much, I don’t want you to feel obligated because of...of guilt, or because you feel you owe me anything.”

“You aren’t listening to me, Charles. You asked me to take my time and think about it, and I have.” Erik closed his eyes and shifted to get more comfortable. “And what I decided is that you are arrogant, privileged, dangerously naive, and I love you. So, yes, I am taking this seriously.”

The end of his sentence was rather lost in white noise inside of Charles’s head as his heart stuttered. “Oh,” he said, lamely.

“Yes, oh.” Erik agreed. 

The words were on the tip of Charles’s tongue, the reciprocation he knew Erik wanted, was waiting, to hear. But he couldn’t say it, not yet. It wasn’t that he didn’t, but the pain between them was still too raw for him to permit that sort of vulnerability. He had to hold part of himself in check. 

All he could do was take Erik’s hand again and squeeze it, and trust he would understand.


End file.
